Anthology
by Juushika Redgrave
Summary: What is soullessness? The unnatural, unhealthy relationship between Goten and Trunks changes. Goten POV. The story that began with /Beautiful/.
1. Beautiful

Beautiful  
The First Song in the /Anthology/  
A TrunksxGoten Songfic Set to /Beautiful/, by Creed  
  
- - -  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball Z. I hope this is rather obvious. I do not own /Beautiful/ or Creed. I hope this is likewise obvious. I am using both without permission. I am making no profit of any form.  
Warnings and notes: This piece is a songfic. The lyrics are /Beautiful/, by Creed (from their CD /Human Clay/), and are changed to reflect subject as male (she -- he). This is the first part of the /Anthology/ series. It contains angst, yaoi, explicit language, the naming of sexual actions, and generally dark subjects. You have been warned. I appreciate reviews (here or sent to swiftskyes@hotmail.com), be they critiques or a general good/bad word. Enjoy.  
Also: Well, I had a lot of requests for a sequel to Beautiful when it was first posted, ages and ages ago. I promised someone that if I had the songs, inspiration, and time that I needed, I would finish the story. I found the songs, I found the inspiration, I made the time, and here's the result. It's a four part series and I'll be posting one each Wednesday.  
Begun April 22, 2001  
Completed June 22, 2001  
  
- - -  
  
Trunks  
Trunks  
Trunks  
Trunks  
Trunks  
  
Just typing his name is some kind of perverse thrill for me. I really shouldn't be writing like this, it's not safe, but… I could say I was bored, saw my laptop where it was shoved by some unpacked crates, and just started typing. But that's not quite true. I've been thinking about this for a while and this time I wasn't able to stop myself. I was alone in my apartment, unpacking and listening to some album. The track switched and the music went from coarse to deep, sweet but cutting and with a heavy base, the kind of music that I guess I like. That song is still on. Next thing I knew I had the laptop open and a document up before it had registered in my brain. I sat here, on my unmade bed, and stared at the screen for a while. Then I finally surrendered and put my hands to the keyboard. I don't know why I'm writing or who I'm writing to or where it'll go, but maybe this will help me move on. Maybe if I say it here then I can get him out of my mind. Unlikely… But I'm gonna write anyways so I might as well make up an excuse for it.  
  
I don't know where to start. I guess his name's as good of a place as any … it's been the most recent focus of my obsessions.  
  
Trunks.  
  
//He wears a coat of color   
Loved by some, feared by others   
He's immortalized in young men's eyes   
Lust he breeds in the eyes of brothers   
Violent sons make bitter mothers   
So close your eyes, here's your surprise//  
  
I suppose that not many earthlings know who he is. They do know what he's done, though. Mirai Trunks killed Freezer … that happened before I was born. He also came back from the future to fight the androids and he battled Cell. The Trunks of this timeline is a martial-artist too. We fought Boo together, him and me. We fused into Gotenks and kicked ass before we were absorbed. He gave all he could to the Genkidama that my dad used to kill Boo. Without him, Mirai or the one now, Earth may not be the way it is today. But that was when we were little, when we were kids. He's different now. Radically different. The years changed everyone, but they changed him most of all.  
  
Trunks is beautiful. Dad says that he looks just like the Trunks that came from the future. He has human hair, lavender not black like the other saiya-jin. He wears it the same way he did when we were kids, with his bangs always in danger of falling into his eyes. Time has made him lose his juvenile childishness and made his eyes hard blue ice, but he grew to be extraordinary. His muscles are compact, like his father's, and his hair is even silkier than his mother's used to be. He's stunning and graceful, and still stronger than I am. His words are always planned and perfect, his voice is rich and sounds so calming … except when he yells. He doesn't do that much, anymore, but when he does you can hear his father in his voice.  
  
People may not know him as a warrior, but he's by no means anonymous. Back home you either know him, if you're lucky, or you know of him. Most people see him as an immortal god, a few hate him. Wherever he goes they follow him and when he enters a room it suddenly becomes very quiet. There's this air around him, so expectant and heavy that it's hard to breathe. Like foreplay - waiting, always waiting, thick with tension. And I'm not the only one who noticed how beautiful he is. They all want him in some way or another … want to be him, want to fuck him. He's always surrounded by girls rabidly vying for his attention. But for someone as attractive, intelligent, and rich as him I guess that's to be expected… Honestly the girls have never really bothered me. The guys, they bother me. One of Trunks' most exceptional traits is his ability to attract males. Even the ones that declare they're straight, long iron pole up the ass straight, he gets to them. He exudes sex and he's as pretty as hell… The girls crave him, the gays desire him, the heterosexual males want to jump his bones.  
  
We were never a couple. We're both bisexual, in theory it could have worked. But he never forms relationships. It's not his style. Regardless, the really funny thing is I was never mad at him, no. I was only jealous, so covetous I had to restrain myself whenever someone even looked at him. I wasn't always completely successful, but at least I never left anyone dead. Small blessings, I guess. Others have the same urges. It goes like this: he enters the room and we all gawk and worship, he leaves and we challenge each other for the right to his love and attention. Always the same.  
  
But once upon a time he was my best friend, and I was probably with him more than anyone. I'm special. I know Trunks … beautiful perfect wonderful person that he is. I know him better than the rest. In so many ways. He's not like they think he is, not what I first believed him to be. I wish I had never found out, that I had remained blissfully deceived, but it's too late now. I'm no better off for my knowledge. It sounds melodramatic, yeah, but what I know haunts me. It prevents me from sleeping and it's always occupying the corner of my mind. I'm writing because it's a hope, albeit a small and pathetic one. My only chance for salvation. If you have a song stuck in your head then sing it, if you have a secret lodged in your brain then tell it.  
  
//The beautiful is empty   
Beautiful is free   
Beautiful loves no one   
Beautiful stripped me  
Stripped me  
Stripped me   
He stripped me//  
  
He wears this exterior, the faultless one that everyone sees, all the time. He hasn't ever taken it off, not since we hit adolescence. It's sculpted with care, every piece exact to the smallest nuance. So free of fault but very, very cold. Lifeless. He's beautifully sexy and rich, above us all and so enigmatic, unattainable, omnipotent, seamless and wonderful. We idolize him, make him into a god and put him on a pedestal that he stands on with pride because it's where he belongs. Maybe there're some that can recognize this full body protective shell for what it is - only I've seen beneath it. Only I've stripped away his flawless coverings.  
  
I guess I expected to see my childhood friend. A little 8-year-old Trunks hidden and buried, struggling to get out. If that's what I had found, I think it would have been ok. Not good, you know, but better. There would have been hope. But fucking-Lord-God-Almighty, was my bubble burst. No innocence there. Not a shred, not a single decaying cell.  
  
So… Anxious yet? Sitting on the edge of your seat and reading quick? Waiting for me to spit it out? Expecting the big surprise, the gasp? Ready to stare? Well grip the chair and bite your lip. Read on.  
  
Here's my secret.  
  
What's beneath Trunks' shell?  
  
Nothing.  
  
That's it. That's all there is. I did it - ripped away his covering, tore off his skin, peered beneath. An empty void was all I saw. There's nothing there, nothing at all. He's empty. Completely empty. I've been through a lot in my life. I've fought in battles, I've suffered in ways you can't imagine, I've died. But never once was there a terror and pain quite like finding out my one friend has no soul.  
  
But something makes me pause… It makes him so free. He's empty, untroubled, uncaring. He holds no love for a single being. He's removed from us. He's his own separate, distinguished universe. Virtually impermeable. Shielded, safe. When the shock and the fear faded, I noticed just how great of a blessing soullessness can be. Is that his reason? Probably. I don't know. It would be mine.  
  
Now, I should tell the story of how I found out. When I did it, why I was able to. And what it did to me. 'Cause he changed me. He drove me from my home to self-imposed exile, showed me who I am, scared the shit out of me. He took me down to my bones and bared my heart, stripped me the same way I stripped him.  
  
//In your mind he's your companion  
Vile instincts often candid   
Your regret is all that's left//  
  
I always thought he was my friend… Fucking stupid mistake, I know that now. He doesn't do friends the same way he doesn't do relationships. That rule formed when he was about 15, maybe a little younger. There was a gradual change - slow, careful, dramatic. Permanent. Step by backwards step he removed himself from humanity. And I, of course, didn't notice until it was too late. So much for being friends.  
  
What exactly does friendship mean anyway? Confidence, companionship, care? Simple love and kindness? Hmm. It's a hard question, and a pointless one at that. All that matters is that I pretended we were friends. Best friends. I believed it was true, would have sworn my life on it.  
  
My connection to him changed me in every possible aspect. I wanted his attention and approval, so I molded myself to his liking. Dressed to please him, spoke the words he wanted to hear, helped him. I'm watching the computer screen as I type and my thoughts, appearing in jolts, look pathetic. Kami-sama, I was. I obeyed his every whim. And when he didn't like something - he never hesitated to say so when that was the case - I scurried to do good. It screwed me over, it really did. I lost myself to him, lost my dignity and self-respect. And I truly, passionately loved what I had become: his whipping boy, his pet, his toy, his slave.  
  
And then for one day, I became his lover.  
  
That was what changed everything. He hadn't planned for it, and from real, true, hardcore sex he has no protection. It ruined us both, but in very different ways. It exposed him, temporarily destroying the shield that is his life. And it showed me what my life had become, terrified me, drove me here. It ripped away my only semblance of a life - Trunks - and left me in a city I don't know, sitting in a room that's not mine on a bed I've only slept in a handful of times. Alone with my laptop and my regrets.  
  
//The beautiful is empty   
Beautiful is free   
Beautiful loves no one   
Beautiful stripped me  
Stripped me  
Stripped me   
He stripped me //  
  
I loved him, you see. I've loved him all my life. When we were little, I looked up to him and trusted him implicitly. It, the fixation, grew as I did, and when sex entered my life… Sure, I've looked at others, lusted over some and slept with almost as many, but he was the center from the beginning and will be there 'til the end. But no love is selfless. I did a lot for him, more than I should have, but I demanded my return.  
  
Did I mention we're both bi? Well, we are. But there was one major difference between us, sexually. He only flirted and did the light stuff. He was a virgin, until me. I wasn't. I made myself perfect for him with one exception: I needed sex. I live in the moment, always have. I wanted him desperately, got hard when I even thought of him, and my only solution was to turn to others for release. A substitute of sorts. I was no slut, but I had my share of one night stands. Meanwhile, I waited for him with all the patience I could manage, thinking he would come to me someday. That lasted for years. Felt like centuries. Finally, I lost it. The time got too long and I got too desperate. I took a risk. I hunted him down and … and had my way with him.  
  
I realize I sound as if I never noticed the shield he wears. That's not the case. I never forgot or overlooked it - I just didn't care. As I saw it, the mask hid something even better, something I wanted to see. And that mask, it was beautiful. Perfect, divine. I wanted him, ok? Shell or no shell, I wanted him. Eventually I took what I wanted.  
  
We had flirted with each other our whole lives. I pushed it beyond the bounds of flirting. Cornered him at his house, where I knew we would be alone, and kissed him. Not our first but definitely of a different kind. He never once resisted me. Not when I dragged him to his room, not when I ripped off his clothes. I barely even prepped him for his first time and still he didn't complain. I fucked him good. What a time… We did it in each and every way I could think of, and I was sore across my whole body for days. It fulfilled just about all of my dreams. A teenage saiya-jin can go at it for hours, longer than anyone but a saiya-jin would believe, and there was no holding back. There's really nothing like doing it all with someone like Trunks. Him on his back, on his stomach, on all fours, standing, leaning over the desk, over my lap, a 69er, the standard blow job and hand job, everything. And no need for protection … I know I'm clean and he sure as hell is. Shit, it was amazing. Just writing about it is enough to get me off.  
  
One small thing bothered me, though. This … lifelessness. He came, hell yeah, more than I did. He showed emotion, even acted of his own accord. But there was something empty about him. Something absent from his crystalline eyes. I didn't pay much attention at the time. It turned out to haunt me - that emptiness was the first clue.  
  
It didn't hit me until I woke up. When we ran out of ideas, energy, and semen we collapsed on his bed and fell asleep. More like passed out, actually. When I came to he was still sleeping. I rolled over to watch that beautiful face of his and that was when I saw it. In his slumber the mask was gone. Maybe it's never there when he sleeps, or maybe he was just too exhausted. Whatever the reason it let me see, in clear mind, the true him I had wanted to see for so long. Completely naked and exposed to me, in every sense. But there was nothing to see. I recognized it then. The emptiness I had felt and his blank eyes, the pure lack of expression that was on his face as he slept … that was what was beneath the shell. I had only one thought: soulless. It ran through my head at a dizzying speed.  
  
I scrambled out of bed, tripping on the sheets. Rushed into his shower and rinsed under the freezing cold water, mind as numb as my skin. Moments later I was pulling on my pants and buttoning up my shirt, wet hair dripping water down my neck. I was out his window and flying to my house just over five minutes after waking, leaving him asleep with his face dead and unchanging.  
  
I made it to my room and then I lost it. Compete breakdown. I didn't even reach my bed or chair - I fell to my knees on the floor, hands spread on the carpet to support me, and cried. Raw, dry sobs and stinging tears. I hyperventilated, fingers clutching desperately at the low, tight weave of the carpet. Everything I should have recognized, should have known, should have seen, it came crashing into my brain at once. The impact was harder than one of my father's best moves, it sent me reeling. A landslide of shame and pity, fear and sorrow smothered me and made me choke. And all the while I was so very quiet. No one heard, no one came to my side.  
  
Eventually I calmed down. My pulsing blood slowed, my eyes dried, my body stopped shaking. I knew - I thought I knew - what I needed to do, as I pushed myself to my feet and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. I had to get out. Inadvertently he had shown me just how pathetic I was, and I was convinced that there was nothing for me there.  
  
I just needed to see him one more time.  
  
//He told me where I'm going   
And it's far away from home   
I think I'll go there on my own   
I think I'll go there on my own//  
  
I waited until a few days had passed, when I was ready. I knew I had to be prepared and careful - he always gets his way. I avoided him at school and skipped the classes we had together. Waited until I knew he would be alone at his place. I cornered him again, like some ironic repetition of the time we had sex. I remember recognizing the symmetry as I opened my mouth - to talk to him this time, not kiss him. I remember it all.  
  
"I'm leaving." My voice was too steady for my emotions and for some reason I met his gaze without wavering.  
  
His eyes narrowed at me. "Why?" he asked.  
  
"Because I can't do this any more. I've done to -"  
  
Then he interrupted me with, "Can't do what?" in a tone that was demanding. I'd never noticed just how controlling his voice alone was, not until then.  
  
I glanced at my hand, pressed against the wall. "I've lost myself to you. And you're not even alive enough to accept it. I love you, Trunks." His name, lacking any suffix, came from my mouth bitterly. "I love you, but I need to get out of here." Each phrase flowed smoothly, controlled, refusing to reflect the fear in my soul. But that fear, rising in my throat like bile, felt good. It was a reminder that I had a soul, even if he didn't.  
  
"Goten…" his voice was suddenly soft, comforting. "If you need to, then leave. With my blessing. I don't want to see you go, but do what you think is right." He was trying to calm me and coerce me into staying, all this the rolling tone of his voice. For the first time I was facing him with an undeceived mind and I could read every subtle trick, every minute manipulation in his soothing tone and the way he demurely adjusted his shirt collar. I've always liked that shirt, a midnight black one that sets off his eyes and hair.  
  
I had made up my mind, though. I wanted desperately, so desperately, to break down, apologize, let him kiss me sweetly, and return to my position as personal slave. If I had to do it all over again, I know I would relent. But instead of falling into his arms, I swallowed and forced myself to turn and meet his eyes.  
  
"It's not gonna work on me, Trunks. Not this time." I paused, and then more words slipped from my mouth unasked. "I would pity you, if there was something there to pity. But there's not, so I won't. I love you … always have. Goodbye." I paced forward, across the living room, and kissed him - no real contact, just a light brush. But his mouth opened to mine and we made out again. Heavy, wet. The only goodbye he ever gave me.  
  
//He told me where I'm going   
And it's far away from home   
I think I'll go there on my own   
I think I'll go there on my own//  
  
I didn't have any plans. To be completely honest, all I knew was that I wanted to get out of there immediately. Just switching schools or dropping out wouldn't have been enough, 'cause we saw each other too much. With fathers like ours … they're constantly together, training I'm sure, so Trunks and I got shoved together as well. That wouldn't have changed if I had stayed, no matter what I tried. Skipping town was my only option.  
  
I packed my bags that same night. Everything I thought I would need got packed into the boxes I had picked up on my way home from Trunks' house. Put just about my entire room into cardboard crates. Those crates are still littering my apartment. In all of my life so far, those were some of the most depressing moments. For the first time, my actions hit me - I knew what I was going to do. But somehow, amidst the pausing and panicking, I got it done.  
  
Then I told my parents. My mom … we're not really that close, as it's hard to be close to someone who's constantly comparing you to your brother, but she wasn't pleased with me dropping out and moving. My dad I trusted. He didn't ask questions, he just shut Mom up and got my stuff shipped. I don't remember how I found this place, but the words "Son Goku's boy," whispered in the right ears can have a huge effect. It's a good place. Quiet, lonely, nowhere near my parents' house and even further from Trunks'. The neighborhood is nice and there's no one around to bother me.  
  
That's the story. I've been here for just about a week. I'm enrolling in the local community college, starting classes some time in the month. I have some money saved up and a few interviews in the next few weeks. It's like some lame voyage of self-discovery, the kind of things physiatrists write self-help books about. That's all my pathetic life had been reduced to. Me, alone in this alien city, trying to rediscover my personality and myself.  
  
//He told me where I'm going   
And it's far away from home   
I think I'll go there on my own   
I think I'll go there on my own//  
  
The only person to contact me since I got here was my dad, who called just to check up on me. Other than that, I've basically been on my own. I have this perfect opportunity here: plenty of uninterrupted time to myself, no distractions, quiet, resources, everything I could possibly need to enable me to go through the whole rediscovery thing. It could be just what I require. I can solve all my problems now.  
  
But for every second of the weeks I've been here, Trunks has been the center of my attention. I've removed myself, got as far away as I could manage, but he continues to dominate me. I haven't heard much about him since I moved, just a few sentences at most, but he won't leave me alone. I just don't know how to live without him. He was everything I knew and I lived my life for him. I still do, even although he's not here with me. All I ever do is think of him.  
  
You wouldn't believe the theories I've come up with. Thousands of explanations for how he became what he is. Reasons for why. There's this one that I've expanded and refined. It may actually be true. A possible, even probable explanation. I've looked at the situation in each and every way, and it's the best I've been able to come up with.  
  
Trunks had a lot to live up to, born and raised in the shadow of Mirai Trunks and as the son of Bulma Briefs, achieved scientist, and Vegeta, the saiya-no-ouji. When adolescence hit and he became even more dependant on the opinions of others he was forced into taking an extreme action. He created the shell to impress others and protect himself. It worked wonderfully, perfectly. Too well. Everyone loved that shell, so he continued to use it. Eventually it corroded the person hidden beneath, slowly devoured him and then destroyed him. It took the place he had left and it became him. The young Trunks I knew existed no longer, and in his place stood a mask that I loved and worshipped, that I sacrificed myself to serve.  
  
I find that the more I think about it, the more I pity him. The transformation was out of his control. My compassion exceeds to a dangerous level. Sometimes, I feel guilty. Guilty about what I said and guilty for leaving. At the beginning of this I mentioned that writing about Trunks was unsafe - this is why. When I think about him I feel guilty and when I feel guilty I want to go back.  
  
//The beautiful is empty   
Beautiful is free   
Beautiful loves no one   
Beautiful stripped me  
Stripped me  
Stripped me   
He stripped me//   
  
I'm lonely. I miss Trunks desperately. I want to go back to him. I fear that what I did was wrong.  
  
But I'm also afraid. Anyone who had seen what I saw and knew what I know would be. My fear and my pride stop me from going back. I took a big step, leaving the way I did, and I can't return without being completely humiliated. More importantly, I did it for a reason. I was terrified. I don't want to go through that again, ever. But in the face of my loneliness and longing, I can feel my reservations breaking down more with each passing day.  
  
I have this fantasy that I can change him. That I can fill the void where his soul should be and, suddenly, miraculously, everything will be perfect again. I know it's crazy - delusional - but I keep coming back to it. If I am capable of helping him I have my reason for returning home, the perfect excuse for going back. Kami-sama, I want to go back to him. I can't put into words how badly I wish I had never left.  
  
I know just what would happen if I went back. I know action for action what Trunks had been up to since I left, exactly what he's doing as I type these words, and I know how it would be if I returned. In the end, things always, always turn out right for him. I know. I've known him my whole life.  
  
It would be the same as always, as if nothing had ever happened between us. I wouldn't say anything and neither would he. As easily as if I had never left, I would slip back into my place. My safe, comfortable, happy, established place. The others around us would wonder what had been wrong and they would question me. When I gave them a lie they would accept it. Soon, we would all forget anything had happened at all - the activity between Trunks and myself, my discovery, my leaving, it would all become a far-off memory. A dream. But at night, in my sleep, the vengeful ghost of what I know would haunt me.  
  
I would be happy and they would be happy and Trunks would be Trunks.  
  
I have no connection to this place. It's tailored to my needs, yes, custom made for me. But I have no love for it, no emotion whatsoever. Without Trunks it is lifeless. All that keeps me here is Trunks, repelling and attracting me at the same time and leaving me in indecisive suspended limbo. I know - I think - I should stay. But I'm guilty. I miss him. I want to return. But I'm afraid. If I could fix it, I would run home. I would leave this place immediately.  
  
I wish I could hear his voice. I wish I had the courage to call. Face all the possible problems, all the dangers. I wish I could talk to him. The phone is so close and so unsafe. It's even more dangerous than this laptop and this writing. I know his number by heart.  
  
I  
  
I  
  
I  
  
I'm gonna stop wishing.  
  
//He stripped me  
Stripped me//  
  
Ringing.  
  
"Hello."  
  
"Trunks? Hey … it's Goten."  
  
A pause.  
  
"Trunks?"  
  
"Goten."  
  
A nervous laugh. "Hey. I was just thinking about you, so I decided to call. Just to say hi. I guess. How've things been?"  
  
"It's different without you here."  
  
"Well…" A cough. A pause. "Aw, shit. I miss you Trunks. I really do."  
  
"I miss you too."  
  
"I'm thinking about coming home."  
  
"What's stopping you?"  
  
A long pause. "I don't know. You are."  
  
"But I want you to -"  
  
"I know. I know. But when … after we…" A sigh. "Shimatta! There's something wrong, Trunks. Something wrong with you and with me. I want to come back, but I know it'll all go back to the way it was… I can't do that."  
  
"What's wrong? Tell me, Goten."  
  
"You're … you're not alive, Trunks, and it kills me too. You're missing life. Your missing a … a soul, and you take away mine. It just doesn't work and I can't do it anymore."  
  
"Then fix it."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"It there's something wrong, then correct it."  
  
"I can't do that…"  
  
"Please."  
  
"You're the only one who can…"  
  
"Please, Goten."  
  
Silence.  
  
" 'Ten…"  
  
A pause. A stifled moan. "And if it doesn't work?"  
  
"Do you love me?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Then you'll have me, and be happy, and I'll be no worse off. Come home, Goten."  
  
"I love you."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Can you find me?"  
  
"Yes … I've been tracking your ki since you left."  
  
"Come and help me pack?"  
  
"I'll be there in ten minutes."  
  
A click.  
  
"Trunks…" 


	2. The One

The One  
The Second Song of the /Anthology/  
A TrunksxGoten Songfic Set to /The One/, by Limp Bizkit  
  
- - -  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball Z. I hope this is rather obvious. I do not own /The One/ or Limp Bizkit. I hope this is likewise obvious. I am using both without permission. I am making no profit of any form.  
Warnings and notes: This piece is a songfic. The lyrics are /The One/, by Limp Bizkit (from their CD /Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water/). It is the second in the /Anthology/ series and the previous part should be read first. It contains angst, yaoi, explicit language, the naming of sexual actions, and generally dark subjects. You have been warned. I appreciate reviews (swiftskyes@hotmail.com), be they critiques or a general good/bad word. Enjoy.  
Begun 9.10.01  
Completed 1.0.02  
  
- - -  
  
Irony is a twist of fate, an event that defies logic or goes against what has been predicted. Irony is deciding not to call Trunks but to do homework instead and then opening up a word processing program to find my writing about him as a recovered document open on the screen.  
  
I know I won't get any homework done now.  
  
Did I reread my words? Yes. Just seeing the first page made me remember it all and I didn't need to reread it but I did anyway. It's strange to see our past, written out like that. Like a little novel, a little vignette. Things are really different now. A great deal has changed since then. So I'll tell the story, of course. The continuation. The sequel. The next episode. I've got to, because the moment is just too perfect not to. He's on my mind, good rhythmic slow music is coming through the speakers below my wrists, and my laptop is here and open and waiting.  
  
So I'll begin where I left off.  
  
//I'm dead from all the loneliness   
And this is how I feel   
Understanding everything has never been my deal   
Maybe you have crossed my path to live inside of me   
Or maybe you're the reason why I'm losing all my decency//  
  
I didn't understand the full extent of how lonely I was until Trunks arrived to help me pack. Seeing him – hair wild from flying, ratty blue jeans, white shirt with a faded Bokoukai logo printed on the front – standing there at the apartment door made my gut wrench. He said my name and kissed me, so chastely, and I wanted to cry. He packed. I couldn't. All I could do was stand there and stare at him. I felt alive again, filled with the emotion that had been lacking in our time apart. I had always known I loved him but at that moment I felt it as well, stronger than ever before. I know how awful, how dramatic that sounds, really I do, but that overly sentimental description is the only one I can come up with.  
  
Time flew by. Within moments, it felt, Trunks was taking me home. He went with me to my parents and I told them I had decided to return. They couldn't question me about it because they had never found out why I left in the first place. I got my room back and soon everything began to fall into place just like I had known it would. My social group accepted me, my family was glad I was back, and Trunks, of course, was Trunks. Sure, there were a few changes. I didn't return to high school but instead enrolled at the local community college. I got a part time job just to have something to do – not for the money, of course, because Trunks paid for anything I wanted. Some people in my social group had left and there were a few new members, including this one girl I slept with two or three times, just to relieve the pressure of being around Trunks again. There were more small changes, but it didn't matter – I was home.  
  
I didn't notice anything was wrong for a good long time.  
  
I've known Trunks my entire life. My first memory is of him, leaning into my vision and prodding me, his face asking, "What's that?" I've known him as young and insolent, as an insecure teenager, as a male Aphrodite, as a shell without a spirit. It wasn't a certain one of these that took away my soul. I gave it as soon as I was able. No single one stole my heart. As soon as it formed he grabbed it from my pried-open, inviting chest. All I had belonged to him as soon as I was able to have it. My self-worth, my decency, my everything.  
  
It was his soullessness that frightened me away. His shell brought me back when he made me believe he could change and that he would. I came home with him because of that.  
  
Obviously, however, he didn't change. If he had then this story would be short: "I came home and he became normal and it was perfect and we lived happily every after." Nope. There was no change. Just Trunks, the same as ever, still perfect, still distant, still the one I had run from. I began to wonder exactly what I had expected – miracles? I began to doubt what I thought – what consisted soullessness? I became aware that I would not know when change occurred because I did not know what it would look like when it did. Gray came down over my eyes – the range between black and white, the area of indistinction. Everything was a maybe or an if, a could be or a sort of. Nothing was certain and everything was unsure. Needless to say, I was very confused.  
  
//But I believe that you and me could be so   
Happy and free inside a world of misery   
And I believe that you and me we could be so   
Inside of you inside of me   
Cuz this could be the one  
This could be the one  
This could be the one  
This could be the one//  
  
What I said just now was wrong. I didn't really come home to change Trunks. I would have come home on my own, I think, eventually. What Trunks said made it happen sooner. Weeks sooner, months sooner, I don't know. He gave me hope while we talked on the phone. I called him just after I broke from my writing, like I said I was going to do – stop wishing and act, that shit – and we talked. He told me things that made me believe that he could change. I came home to do this, I reasoned, but in truth I came home just to be with him. He gave me life and without him I wasn't living.  
  
I know this as of, well, just now. I didn't know it then.  
  
A number of weeks had to pass before the most obvious of facts became clear – that Trunks had not changed with my return. Still distant, still omnipotent, he watched the rest of humanity like a god. I really hadn't changed either. I still worshiped him, I still served him, I still remained exactly who I had been before. I was happy. Quite pathetic. Anyway, I did realize there had been no change, eventually. I realized it not long after the dreams began.  
  
The terror that made me run had been numbed by time and separation and then veiled by the joy of reunion but it was there. After things had resumed their old pattern, after that initial euphoria of seeing him again him had passed, I began to dream. Didn't I say, last time I wrote, that even if I returned and things became perfect again I would still dream of what I knew? Vengeful ghost, I believe my words were. The vengeful ghost of what I knew. Turns out I was right.  
  
I don't know what I dream. When I awake – to the ringing of my alarm in the morning or gasping and sweating in the dead of night – the dream escapes me as if I'm trying to hold on to a cloud. At the beginning they were innocent, harmless even, but as the days progressed I began to have nightmares more and more often. I would awake, clutching the sheets, victim to a phantom horror that I couldn't name. They're part of me, inside of me, and when I'm part of the outside world I can't access them.  
  
Damn, I'm so over-dramatic I can barely stand it.  
  
Well, I began to avoid sleep. When I fall to the nearest suitable surface after days awake I don't dream.  
  
Never have I remembered a single one of my dreams, but I did eventually come to realize what they meant. My subconscious refused to let go of my terror and would not allow me to repeat history. So I became intent on discovering Trunks' soul. I believed it was the only way to save, rescue, salvage the man I loved and that it was the only way I could keep my double-fisted grip on sanity. I do love Trunks and I always have. But love, as I've said before, is selfish. Especially mine. I wanted to be at peace with myself. I wanted to end the fear I felt. I wanted my love returned. I wanted to have the same intense emotion directed at me. I wanted perfection not only in him but also between us. I wanted my happy ever after.  
  
Things took a while to get started because I didn't know where to begin. I needed information, needed help, needed support. So I went to someone who I thought could provide it all. I went to my brother.  
  
If you – who ever you, nonexistent reader, are – think I explained the situation to him you're damn well wrong. I did it the coward's way. You know, "There's this guy I kind of know…" and that kind of bullshit. I knew of this guy who acted removed from the rest of the world. "As if he has no soul," I told him.  
  
Gohan interrupted me. He was too smart to buy the friend-of-a-friend deal, of course. If he had been the type of person that would have, I wouldn't have gone to him. "Do you want my help?" he asked me. When I said I did he went on, "So tell me the whole story. Don't use names if you don't want to, but don't pretend you don't know this person."  
  
So I did, kind of. I didn't drag a knife down my stomach and spill my guts to the floor. I only said the least I needed to. I told him that I had begun believing it was just a shield, just a protection. I told him how I had wanted to see below that shield and that I had fought my way closer. I told him how, eventually, we had had sex. Gohan's always known I was bi so this didn't really disturb him. All he did was raise his eyebrows, as if he hadn't expected I would be attracted to whoever he thought I might be talking about.  
  
"He looks beautiful," I said. "He acts beautiful."  
  
Gohan nodded. I continued. I told him that afterwards, waking up in his room, I had found out the truth. Soulless was the word I used, again, the only word I could use. It's the only word I've ever been able to find. He didn't understand. "There was nothing there," I said. My voice was shaking. "Like a mannequin. Like his face was molded by a machine and not by nature, like it was made of a plastic instead of cells. Without expression. Without emotion. Not even real."  
  
He said that his face had been relaxed. He was sleeping, he said. As if it explained it, as if it made everything make sense. It didn't. Of course it didn't. I tried to tell him how it all clicked then, how there were other clues that I hadn't seen before. Violence didn't bother him. How other people felt didn't affect him. He watched everything without any sorrow. His tone of voice was so perfect that it made others worship him. His eyes showed nothing and never reflected the movements of emotion his body made.  
  
He asked what happened after I found out. I told him I had left the city, it had scared me that much. I told him I returned home because I thought there might be something I could do to make his soul come back. I told him that was why I had come to him – maybe he could give me some help. Something.  
  
I wonder if he had any clue who I was talking about.  
  
When I finished my story there was silence. Then Gohan muttered something about knowing bugs better than people, sat me down and said, "I don't know what to tell you." Not what I wanted to hear but he continued, "I'll always see you as my little brother, Goten, and I don't think anyone's kid brother should be in this kind of mess. You are, and you need my help – I get that. Still…  
  
"I'm not an expert on the human mind. Everything I'm going to tell you is little more than an educated guess. This is what I think:  
  
"I wouldn't call it soullessness. I think he's retreated into himself and stayed there and, no, I don't know enough to say why. For some reason or another he created a shield to protect himself from life and then he kept it, either by choice or because he was incapable of shedding it. What you saw on his face while he slept was an extension of this shell. It is embedded so deeply that he wears it even while sleeping and in sleep it's vacant. However, I doubt it's his lack of soul reflected on his face. I don't believe that's possible."  
  
I wanted to yell, to scream that he was wrong, but I said nothing.  
  
Gohan went on, "You want to know how to bring him back to normal? Shake him out of it. It's a rut he's fallen into and he doesn't know how to climb out. Someone has to help him. I can't tell you what will work – something drastic, something emotional or frightening. Something to shock him back into the world."  
  
He stopped, nodding his head for a moment. Then he said, "I think." He shrugged.  
  
I thanked him, he walked me to the door, I was about to leave, and then he asked, "Do I know him?"  
  
I refused to respond. Because no one knows Trunks, not anymore, no one but me.  
  
I went home.  
  
//I've been lookin'  
Lookin'  
Lookin'  
I've been lookin' for my Mrs. Right but she don't exist   
Chemistry is everything and we're anything but this   
Maybe I have crossed your path to sweep you off your feet   
Or maybe I'm the reason that you cry at night before you sleep//  
  
Gohan hadn't given me the answer I had been looking for. It was too uncertain. I wanted assurance, an absolute, some directions to follow telling me what to do and how to do it. All I had been given was another "maybe" and another "I think." But what other options did I have? None. There was nowhere else to turn for help. Gohan's words were all I had. I might as well try it, I decided. There was no reason not to. There were no disadvantages and no possible harm could result.  
  
Or so I thought. But I'll get to that part soon. I won't rush ahead.  
  
Anyway, then I had to come up with just what I would do. At first nothing came. I was going through my collection of music, just something to do, trying to think. Randomly, without looking, I put a disk in the CD player, set it to shuffle, and pressed play, still tossing Gohan's words around in my mind. The song began.  
  
The same damn song that I'd written to before. The song that played in the background when I typed the first part of this pathetic little saga. I hate that song. It's not sweet, cutting, heavy, whatever I called it before. It's melodramatic, the beat is overemphasized, the singer's voice is grating. I tried to listen to it a few times after coming back home but I couldn't stomach the sound. Memories, probably. I bet that's why.  
  
So I slammed the stop button down and as the music died the idea came to my brain: sex. I decided on it as soon as the word had formed. Sex – why not? Emotion. Action. Physical, oh yeah. Mental. If we did it right, it would be perfect. I smiled and my hormones did a happy little dance. Trunks does look very beautiful.  
  
But then I paused. Our first time, his only time to the best of my knowledge, had been amazing. Mind blowing. Post-orgasmic bliss enough to last a week – except that I had fled in terror after I woke up.  
  
It had been wonderful. Like our bodies were created for it. How I had surrendered, so quickly, to that pure animal instinct and action, and how even frozen Trunks had acted to please me. To please me – to think that he did anything for me is a rush even now. But at the same time, it was unnatural. It was strange. Trunks' eyes, even as he came – again and again – remained unresponsive glass. There was a lack of emotion that first time, on his part.  
  
For me, well, just to see him was love. To touch him, everywhere, in every way, was a different level. It's like – it's like the way that we can't describe God because our descriptors, great, loving, powerful, so forth, just can't apply. For the same reason, I can't describe the emotion I felt when Trunks and I … were together, had sex, fucked each other senseless. How can I even begin to describe something I don't even understand?  
  
I love him. I have always loved him. I think that is the only definite thing in my universe and the only thing I will ever understand.  
  
I wanted to save him, you see, I wanted to fix him and protect him. I thought I had found my opportunity to do so. I knew the odds were against me. It was likely I would fail. That scared me. Failure was and is still frightening. The feelings I felt then were overwhelming. Hope, fear that my hope would be crushed, and of course the good old fear of failure.  
  
But even my fear didn't stop me – not for long, at least. I wanted Trunks. I wanted his love. I would do whatever I had to do to get both. I could make him change. I could make him love me. I had a plan for doing it. The fact that sleeping with him was part of that plan was just a lucky coincidence that I celebrated.  
  
Yeah, uh huh, right.  
  
//But I believe that you and me could be so   
Happy and free inside a world of misery  
And I believe that you and me we could be so   
Inside of you inside of me   
Cuz this could be the one  
This could be the one  
This could be the one  
This could be the one//  
  
I really did think happiness was possible. As you – nonexistent reader, to use the phrase again – have probably guessed, things didn't work out. Obvious, isn't it. If it had worked out, I wouldn't be here writing this – I would be with Trunks. No, things didn't turn out right. No, things didn't go as planned. There was no victory. No.  
  
In retrospect, I was stupid. Idiocy appears to come easily to me. I wasn't certain things would turn out right, I can give myself that much credit, but I did continue to think in absolutes. It would or it wouldn't. I didn't expect complete perfection, even then I doubted that. But a partial, damn-well-good-enough perfection, I believed that could happen. That was "would." "Wouldn't" was nothing, no change, just the continuation of the status quo. Those were the absolutes that I predicted – I thought one of them would happen.   
  
But in real life there are no absolutes. I know this now. Inside of everyone, especially myself, it seems, there is uncertainty. In this messy, impossible, uncontrollable world there is nothing but uncertainty. There are so many uncertainties.  
  
Maybe  
If   
But   
Could  
Clouded   
Gray   
Confusion   
Unknowns   
Randomness  
Exceptions   
Change  
  
Just think about it. Just think.  
  
This is not a world of black and white. This is a world of gray and there is no black and white. Even my black pupils are clouded and stormy. Even the whites of my eyes are shot though with red. In real life there are no absolutes, there is no perfect no and there is no perfect yes.   
  
I believed Trunks could be the one – my one. Maybe, just maybe, he could have been. /Could/ have been. It was a big could. An unlikely could. Because anything /can/ be anything. The absolute /can/ exist. The possibility of that absolute was small, minute, nearly non-existent. In the end, it didn't happen.  
  
//Well what do you think  
We could give it a try   
Cuz you never know   
Maybe we could be soulmates   
But maybe not (maybe not)   
Or maybe so (maybe so)   
If you never try   
Then you'll never know//  
  
Anyway, back to my little story. Before I went on that tangent, I said I had decided to sleep with Trunks in an attempt to bring him back. I knew that much. So what to do? I knew I had to involve Trunks somehow – he was necessary, after all – but I didn't know how I would. I began the way I've begun with almost every boy and girl I've ever slept with: seduction.  
  
There are two general types of attractive guys: manly men and pretty boys, as I call them. Muscles and maturity for the first, slim beauty for the second. Most females and the submissive guys tend to like manly men – they want someone to protect them and to dominate them. The rest of the girls and the dominant guys tend to prefer pretty boys – someone to understand them or just take a good thorough fucking. I know how to appeal to both tastes. I can be strong, I can show off my muscles and act dominating. I also know how to look vulnerable, quiet and beautiful. I like it both ways: I'd like to throw you down on the floor and fuck you right here or why don't you just rip off my clothes and take me where I stand.  
  
Trunks does top and bottom equally well – I knew this from experience – and from that I decided I had to advertise both sides to him. Dominant and submissive. Depending on his mood at the time, show him what he wanted to see. Become the opposite of what he was being.  
  
I felt so damn proud of myself and the fact that I was actually /doing/ something. But, of course, it didn't work. There was no more than the usual response I get from Trunks – just another request and the sort of smile that should be concealed but, by Trunks, never is. Because Trunks isn't like the others I've slept with. Trunks doesn't get seduced. Trunks can't be seduced. He's like a futuristic robot from the anime that everyone watches: its body is beautiful and functions perfectly, its mind is a high-speed computer, but is has no real self or soul or personality. You can't seduce that robot.  
  
I noticed Trunks wasn't responding to the obvious come-ons and I figured out it wasn't working. So I changed my plan of attack. How do you propose the idea of sexual intercourse to someone like Trunks? You ask him, "So, you wanna have sex?" No, those aren't the exact words I used. I beat around the bush for a while first. I sat him down and recounted the facts. I had returned, on his request. I had come home and moved back and returned to my life just for him. I had fulfilled my side of the bargain but his side was still incomplete. I told him he hadn't even begun to change. He needed to. Then I tried to come frankly to my point, but there was no polite way to say it. Make love didn't work for all the obvious reasons, have sex seemed to dry and blunt, fuck was vulgar. So I stumbled between phrases. Eventually I just said, "Sleep with me, Trunks."  
  
Trunks raised an eyebrow at me, a faint mockery of real surprise. He asked me why.  
  
I told him half a truth and half a lie. It could do something. It could be what he needed to change him. It may have some affect – I wasn't sure what, exactly, but I knew there was no harm in trying. I loved him and I wanted him to become himself. I didn't tell him Gohan had recommended it. I didn't tell him I had a hard-on just thinking about it there, alone with him in his living room, but I think he knew that. "You told me to correct whatever problems I needed to. I think this is the way to do that. I want to try. If we don't, we'll be passing up an opportunity and wasting more time." That was what I ended with.  
  
"Ok," he said.  
  
Wasn't it supposed to be harder than that? He should have put up a fight and I should have had to convince him and do something more, say more. That would have felt better. He just gave me a simple yes and there was nothing more I could say. "Just don't leave this time," he told me. Then the conversation ended and we went out to see a movie with some other guys and their girlfriends. No, it was too easy.  
  
//The grass could be greener (could be)   
And it'll always be greener on the other side   
But you just never know  
(This could be the one)//  
  
What we have – or had, or whatever – isn't normal. No romance, no sweet words, very little of anything from him at all. I love him but his expressions, his gifts depend on what I do for him. It's not perfect. He may be, but the relationship's not, and I didn't even try to kid myself about that.  
  
But it could be better, that's what I thought. We could gain at least some of what everyone else had. So what if we never got the perfect romance. It would be better than nothing and it would be better than what we had. I reasoned myself to oblivion and back again, so sure that what I was doing was understandable and supported and right.  
  
I love him so, so much. Love burns. It makes my skin burn when he's nearby. It makes my retina burn when I see him. It makes my fingers burn when he's close enough to reach out and touch. There was no relief for that burning, nothing I did stopped it. I wanted anything other than that. To hell with perfection. To hell with never compromising. It would never reach perfection, I knew that, and I didn't give a damn. There is nothing perfect in this world except Trunks.  
  
I continued to believe in these absolute outcomes: imperfect change or no change at all. I didn't think anything tangibly, realistically wrong would come from my failure. I really thought that I had nothing to lose. I thought nothing bad could come from it. Love made me a blind, bumbling, stupid idiot. But then, things are always so much clearer in retrospect, aren't they.  
  
Bulma and my mother went out shopping at a mall an hour away by car, then Dad and Vegeta secluded themselves in the Capsule Corps complex to train. Trunks came over. To spar and just hang out, was our excuse, but we never needed to use it because no one ever asked.  
  
We stood in the living room, me staring at him and him watching me. "Well," I said, "let's try."  
  
//I do believe that you and me we could be so  
Happy and free inside a world of misery   
And I believe that you and me we could be so  
Inside of you inside of me  
Cuz this could be the one  
This could be the one  
This could be the one  
This could be the one//  
  
Of course it began awkwardly. But as we kissed, my hands traveling and his on my neck and in my hair, my passion overtook my cowardice. The foreplay was so leisurely, so wonderful, moving slowly down the hallway and leaving clothes in our wake. Teasing, leading, until we were both anxious.  
  
Our first time together was all my built up passion finally finding a release. The second time was less desperate. There was more to it. It was a deeper kind of penetration – no pun intended – and not as frantic. Through the whole thing I was overwhelmed. I put all my energy into my actions – he came even before his jeans had come off from what I did to his tail spot and through his unzipped fly.  
  
But you didn't know a saiya-jin can keep a hard-on even after his orgasm.  
  
But for all it was, I knew even as it went on that it wasn't perfect. He was still emotionally unresponsive. It was still stunted. He acted, yes. He teased me, he tempted me. But still, his eyes were cold. I tried to ignore it and to continue and believe that something soon would create change.  
  
We took it all the way, then. Not as many positions this time and not quite as many orgasms, but very different and so much more powerful.  
  
Halfway through our first round, I think it was, he took the initiative for the first time. That time, for the first time, he didn't follow my lead. I was sprawled on my bed, my arms above my head, my legs spread, limbs hanging off. Trunks was on his knees, between my legs, looking down at me. We were both panting, his light and controlled, mind more ragged. And then, still watching me, Trunks smiled. It was a frightening smirk – worrying in its own right but even more so coming from him. Then he bent his pretty head and did the most amazing things to me, things I won't even try to describe, things that make me grip the bedsheets until my fingers ripped through. Anyway, that little bit of emotion was the first I had seen from him in years. How terrifying and how out of place it was over his features. It thrilled me to see it. I thought it was the beginning. I had started it, he was changing, and with a little more time I would succeed. I celebrated.  
  
What an idiot I was.  
  
Trying to encourage more emotion and action I gave him more of what he had reacted to. I prostrated myself, spread myself open for him, begged and exhibited and invited. He took what I offered. My God did he. I came the way they write about it – seeing stars and then losing my vision, crying, calling his name, clutching anything I could reach. Most definitely mind-blowing – again, no pun intended.  
  
There was another surprise waiting for me. At one point, controlling me the way he was doing at the time, he tore my anus. Not a small tear, I wouldn't have noticed that, but a fairly good one that made some blood flow. It didn't hurt that bad. I'm a saiya-jin, after all, with a high tolerance for pain and plenty of experience in it. But Trunks has the same type of heritage I do, so he's capable of hurting me – plus, that's a very sensitive area. He hurt me, and I growled – I was nearly incapable of words by then – and even bared my teeth at him. Trunks laughed down at me, a dry and amused chuckle. Then he began to push in harder and it hurt more, so I responded, but he kept at it until the pleasure became stronger than the pain. Such a fine line separate the two, you know. When he broke that barrier I swear to God I nearly lost my mind.  
  
By the end of it, I was dead tired and full of the feeling of being with him. I could take no more. He held me and I curled up against him, together on my small twin bed, and I began to drift off to sleep. Just then, for a few moments, I felt fear. I was afraid of what I would have to face when I awoke. Sleep, however, was inevitable.  
  
Trunks was up before me, sitting in my chair in a pair of my drawstring pants, holding a closed book, watching me. "Get dressed," he said, "your mother is on her way." How strange it was. Dressing with him staring at me, picking our clothes up off the hallway floor, cleaning up my room and opening the window to let in some clean air. He left just before Mom came home. When she arrived I was at my desk, sitting in the same chair he had used, pretending to do homework. She asked me how I was.  
  
There's only one part of this story left to tell – the aftermath. Not much to say about it because there was very little change. For the most part Trunks remained identical to how he had been before. As I've said, I was wrong, it didn't work, I didn't achieve happily-ever-after. I waited, let a few days pass, anxious for that magical change to occur, waiting to see my result. Nothing changed, really. Nothing really has changed and it's been two weeks. I'm not angry with him about it. I'm not capable of that, at least I can't sustain it for long. I'm angry with myself. I feel like an idiot. I was an idiot.  
  
There was, however, one small and minor change. It's still going on and I still don't understand it or know what it means. He's become more active. It's as if that rather passive mask of his has been multiplied again and again in a rather twisted way. We used to flirt, light touches and a few kisses and little more. Now he'll grab me, push me up against a wall, and explore my body from mouth to groin until I pant with need. The girl I was sleeping with has disappeared, spending her time with a new group, and I'm sure he caused that. He's controlling now. He acts. To be honest, I don't know if I like it. I mean, my freedom has always been important to me, especially because I find my needed physical release through it. But I've always wanted the kind of attention from him that he's giving me now. It's not love, I don't think. It's only the expansion of his shell into a powerful controller and abuser, one who may slam my head against the wall while he makes out with me and not give a damn, one who loves it when I fight back.  
  
Confusion, it seems, is again all I have. It's the result – not success, not a lack of change, but confusion. Sure as hell I'm worse off than I was. I have no plan and no hope and no clue what's going on or what I should do. So I wonder where it's going to go and I think about him and now I'm going to end this pathetic excuse for a piece of writing and go out somewhere with Trunks. The phone is ringing and I know it's him.  
  
//Maybe so (maybe so)   
Maybe not (maybe not)   
Who knows?//  
  
"It's beautiful out here."  
  
"It is."  
  
"You know, I think I could get used to this."  
  
Silence.  
  
"Trunks?"  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Just sitting out here, with you, not worrying or thinking."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"You know, maybe this is how it's supposed to be. I don't mean just this – I mean all of it. You've changed a little since I came home."  
  
"I have."  
  
"Yeah. I'm not sure how, exactly, but you –"  
  
"Goten. You're lying."  
  
"Yeah, I guess I am. Anyway, you have changed, a little, and that's more than nothing, right? I think I could get used to this, if it was all there was going to be."  
  
"Don't bet on it."  
  
"Huh? Trunks? What do you mean?"  
  
"I meant what I said. Don't get locked into anything just yet. Things are only getting started."  
  
"Oh."  
  
Silence.  
  
Birdsong.  
  
"You know … no matter what happens, as long as you're around I think I'll be ok. You told me once before that I would be happy just to be with you, remember? I think you were right. I do love you, Trunks."  
  
Silence.  
  
Wind.  
  
"Does the offer for sex still stand or was it just for that one time?"  
  
"Shit, Trunks. What do you mean?"  
  
"Exactly what it sounds like."  
  
"Out here? Someone could come by. We haven't seen anyone else out here before, I know, but that doesn't mean people don't know where it is."  
  
"I don't care."  
  
The sound of movement.  
  
"Hey!"  
  
"Shut up, Goten. Stop complaining. You know we're alone."  
  
Rustle of clothing.  
  
"God, Trunks…"  
  
"Make some noise for me, chibi-chan, little Goten."  
  
"Fuck – whatever you want." 


	3. With You

With You  
The Third Song of the /Anthology/  
A TrunksxGoten Songfic Set to /With You/, by Linkin Park   
  
- - -  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball Z. I hope this is rather obvious. I do not own /With You/ or Linkin Park. I hope this is likewise obvious. I am using both without permission. I am making no profit of any form.  
Warnings and notes: This piece is a songfic. The lyrics are /With You/, by Linkin Park (from their CD /Hybrid Theory/). It is the third in the /Anthology/ series and the previous pieces should be read first. It contains angst, yaoi, explicit language, the naming of sexual actions, and generally dark subjects. You have been warned. I appreciate reviews (swiftskyes@hotmail.com), be they critiques or a general good/bad word. Enjoy.  
Begun 9.29.01  
Completed 1.9.01  
  
- - -  
  
Well.  
  
I'm back again, it seems. I don't know why I keep returning to this document or why I've finally saved it. I never was one for telling stories and I've never kept a journal before. I write here anyway. This time I'm doing it by choice instead of fate or chance or whatever the other two times were. I wanted to write this morning. I think I have things I need to say.  
  
So I turned on some music – I like this song, which is really too bad for me because after writing to a song I can never listen to it again – anyway, I turned on some music, more lyrical than the first two, opened my laptop, lay down on my bed still smelling of my semen, and now I'm here, writing, saying what I need to say.  
  
//I woke up in a dream today   
To the cold static  
Put my cold feet on the floor  
Forgot all about yesterday   
Remembering I'm pretending to be where I'm not anymore   
A little taste of hypocrisy   
And I'm left in the wake of the mistake   
Slow to react   
Even though you're still so close to me   
You're still so distant   
And I can't bring you back//  
  
Last night I dreamt of Trunks, the most vivid dream I've ever had. It's the reason I thought to write. Trunks is heavy on my mind, and when he is I put those thoughts here.  
  
The dream: I was bound, ropes holding my ankles and wrists together, and I was standing in the middle of an empty room. Agony was lashing down my back like a whip. I arched, crying out, and my head hit against another body. Trunks, of course, was behind me. I felt him there and then I felt what he was doing to me. He was fucking me, rough but sweet, as I stood.  
  
The sheets were sticky and wet when I woke up.  
  
Lately, my dreams have become my escape from reality. They're my way out of the mundane noise of this world. That was still a bit extreme, even in my dark perverted mind. It's most graphic dream I've ever had. Disturbing that it's the one that best reflects our relationship.  
  
I've been doing some pretty heavy thinking, which is probably why Trunks is on my mind the way he is. Over the last four weeks I've had a lot of time to think. Trunks is out of town and there's no way I can see him. I'm just as lonely as I was in West Green, when I went off on my own. This time it was him who left me so I can't just come back and make it all better. Anyway, I've thought and I've decided something. It's time for me to move on from the past. It's time for me to forget, to start again. I can't just stop, though, ending dead cold. So that's what this is – it's my last high before I go clean, my last binge before I diet. I'll talk about the past just one more time.  
  
Don't get me wrong – it's not like I'm ever going to forget it all. I don't think I can. But I'm going to try. Try to forget that Trunks has no soul. Try to pretend I'm back to being oblivious and happy, like I was last year, before I found out. Try to return to my naïve past, my innocent past. Give us all a clean slate. After this, I'll start. I just need to tell this story first.  
  
Yeah.  
  
Hypocrite is a beautiful word. Ignore the seeming irrelevance, I do have a point. Hypocrite is a beautiful word. It flows so gently, the sounds are so soft. What really makes it beautiful is the way its meaning clashes with the sound. A hypocrite does the reverse of what he preaches. I am a hypocrite. I'm one of the world's biggest. I'm one of the most adept but oblivious hypocrites in this universe.  
  
Want examples? I say I'm going to stay away forever, say I'm terrified of Trunks, then I come back. I claim that the only reason I came home was to change him, but in truth I only came home to be with him. I promise to change him and make him better but I ended up creating a monster. Then I swear to leave him alone, to let him be, and I end up fucking him and dating him. Worst of them all is the fact that, no matter how hard I try to be miserable because I know I should be, he still makes me happy.  
  
Hypocrite, indeed. It was my hypocrisy that got us to this point and it's my hypocrisy that will make me write what I'm gonna write, I know it.  
  
Well, since I wrote last our relationship has progressed. Hell of an understatement, that. Now we're together all the time. It's like how we were as kids – if you want me look for Trunks because I'm never far away. But we aren't kids anymore. A lot of our 'together' time is spent having sex. I've stopped counting the times, actually. The number doesn't matter anymore. He initiated it, our third time, out at our cliff, and has initiated it a lot since then. He wants me. Damn – can you even begin to imagine how good that feels?  
  
As much as things have changed, as much as we have, Trunks is still his removed self. There's a little bit of something there. When I'm involved, he does appear to feel, but not in the normal way. Events don't impact him, consequences do. Example: when someone flirts with me he pauses before doing what he needs to do to remedy the situation – distracting them, pulling me away, or threatening, whatever's most effective. He thinks, first. He analysis his moves before he acts. The thought and the action were always there, yeah, but now they're evident, aggressive. He doesn't feel, though, not like the rest of us.  
  
There has been one other major change in our relationship. We have one, now, complete with a title. Boyfriend. We're dating.  
  
//It's true   
The way I feel  
Was promised by your face  
The sound of your voice  
Painted on my memories  
Even if you're not with me  
I'm with you//  
  
You know, I'm not sure what it is about Trunks that I love. He's beautiful – drop dead gorgeous, in fact – but if I said I loved his face and body, well, it would sound pretty bad. It's just that I can't say I love him for himself. I may have fallen in love with his personality, years ago, but now he doesn't have a personality so I can't say I love him for it. Maybe it's his beauty that keeps me here, that and the unmet promise for more. It doesn't matter. Regardless of why I do love him and for whatever reason I'm not going to leave.  
  
He did promise me more, though. He promised to change. He promised to become someone better. Scratch that – to become /someone/, period. He used that promise to bring me home. Would I have returned without it? Yes, but, as I've said, not as quickly. Like a fool, I trusted his promise just like I've trusted all the promises he's ever made me.  
  
He promised me happiness. I still want it. He promised me change. I want more. As time progressed I got him to promise me something more – couplehood. That I have. We were only together for about a week before he left town, though. He's away on CC business. First he was in England, now he's in America. He doesn't have any sure dates but he said he would be gone for no more than a month and a half. It's been four weeks. I've got no excuse for going there, and he's barely had the time to talk on the phone. We've had one conversation in these four weeks. Before he left he promised me – another promise – that he would come home soon and that when he did, we could finally tell everyone about us. I remember that promise real well. He was just using it to calm me down, yeah, but there was something in his voice that made me feel loved. The word "boyfriend" tends to have that affect on me. Anyway, he wouldn't let me tell anyone, not yet, so no matter how badly I want to brag the news to everyone I stay silent.   
  
I wonder how they'll take it when they finally find out.  
  
He's not here with me, so just like in West Green I think of him all the time. He owns my mind. I wonder what he's doing while I sit in though lectures. I jerk off with his image fixed in my mind. I fall asleep pretending that he's holding me. In my mind, in my thoughts, I'm always with him. My grades have dropped, not surprisingly. My mother is worried about me. I don't give a flying fuck about anything but him.  
  
//You  
Now I see  
Keeping everything inside  
With you  
You  
Now I see  
Even when I close my eyes//  
  
I'm getting off the point  
  
Ok – I made my life-changing decision for a reason. I don't see change on the horizon. If I did, I wouldn't resign myself to just forgetting and moving on. But how can soullessness ever change?  
  
I know – I think I know, at least – that Trunks is soulless. I mean, I've seen it, haven't I? I saw him sleeping, I saw that emptiness. I know what I saw. Trunks has no soul. Gohan doesn't agree, but that doesn't change the facts. He claims there is no such thing as soullessness. He says that removal, shock, closing off from the world, all that exists. But the soul cannot be taken away, he says, and it can't die off. Funny how what we think clashes so strongly. I choose to believe what I've seen with my own eyes. I saw soullessness and soullessness doesn't change.  
  
I've thought this out. You see, in all my work all I've done was create a small change in him. Not enough of one, and not even the kind I wanted. I've seen all the change that I think I'm ever going to see – a tendency to be violent and an even colder, more analytical mind. The truth is that against his soullessness I'm pretty powerless. I did all I could do and not much resulted. There's no point in trying to do any more so I might as well forget it all.  
  
As is obvious, I've had way too much time to think. That's dangerous. I never think – I just act. Live for the moment, right? Anyway, while sitting in class and not paying attention to the professor I've thought long and hard. Pardon the pun. I've thought about our relationship, about the path it's taken, about where it is now. Everything about us, everything about our couplehood. That's why I know this story so well. Trunks is my obsession, regardless of where I am or where he is. He always has been. He always will be.  
  
I take back my earlier statement – I am lonelier now than I have ever been. When I left before, I didn't really know that I was leaving behind. Like how firm his arms are, wrapped around me. How his skin smells of musk and his hair of lavender. How he tastes of salt and blood. How warm he is when the night is so cold. How silky his breath is against my ear. I've had all that now, and I know how it feels, and I want it back. I miss him the most at night. I curl up in bed, clutch a pillow to my chest, pull heavy blankets over myself, and try to pretend he's there. Pathetic. Lying there with my eyes screwed shut, thinking of him and imagining him every single damned night he's been gone. I worry and I think and I miss and I dream and I can't stop.  
  
Well, I guess I should just get on with it and tell the story.  
  
//I hit you and you hit me back   
We fall to the floor   
The rest of the day stands still   
Fine line between this and that   
When things go wrong I pretend that the past isn't real   
I'm trapped in this memory   
And I'm left in the wake of the mistake   
Slow to react   
So even though you're close to me   
You're still so distant   
And I can't bring you back//  
  
I never was the type to simply take what is dished out to me. It's not in my nature and it's sure as hell not in my blood – I'm half saiya-jin. Granted, I take more from Trunks than I do from anyone else in the world, but even that isn't very much. So when he hits me or threatens me or beats on me – and he does, or at least he does now – I do just about the same back. Like sparring, or fighting. You don't just lay there and take it, if you did you would get beaten or killed. I know. I've seen it happen. So I fight back. I mean, who wouldn't?  
  
He loves it.  
  
Sometimes we have sex just for the sake of having sex. We are hormonal teenagers, after all, and nothing compares to the saiya-jin sex drive. So, sometimes, that's all it is, you know. But there are the times when it's the result of violence. We'll be arguing or something and one of us will lose it. His fist will fly, or mine, and then there'll be some retaliation. Sometimes it's because of sparring. The violence does something to him and God does it do things to me, and we'll be horny and hot and things just happen. It's brutal. It bruises /me/, and I don't bruise easily. It's wonderful, too. There's this fine line between pain and pleasure, like I've said before, and our violence almost always crosses it. It's the most amazing high. Not that I do drugs. I've tried a few, the way everyone has, but I don't think they would have any affect on me now. I used to be fairly resistant – it was only because of my human blood that I felt anything at all – and now, well, now that I've gotten the ultimate high from Trunks I bet my life that I couldn't feel heroin if someone pumped it up my ass. It's that good, it really is.  
  
But nothing is perfect all the time. Sometimes we spar and that's all. Every now and then, he gets so violent when we have sex that he does some less than minor damage – real bad bruising or he breaks my skin, and once I think he cracked one of my ribs, all of which I can heal from pretty quickly. Then there are the handful of times when he's more up for it than me and pushes on even although I don't really want to.  
  
He raped me, once.  
  
It's not as bad as it sounds, I mean, I wasn't resisting. He was just, I don't know, he was more excited than me and when he wouldn't take no for an answer I laid over his desk, put my head down, and waited until he was done. He must have really needed it because he didn't care that I didn't say anything and didn't move and didn't even have much of a hard-on. I think it bothered him just a little, but not enough stop him. It didn't really hurt that bad, he wasn't much worse than usual. I just closed my eyes and thought about something else. It wasn't difficult. It doesn't seem that bad.  
  
I just can't forget it, is all. All the time I was able to pretend it was nothing, and I can still claim it's no big deal. I can say everything is ok, I can say it, but – but he hits me and I hit him and that can never be ok. I'm no pacifist, of course, and I'm just as likely as anyone to bite my lover or scratch my nails down his or her back. But this violence seems unhealthy, even to me. The worst part of it all, I guess, is the fact that even this, this intentional and brutal violence, it isn't even an emotion. He seems so close, there to hold me and do things to me and say the words he says, but he's still so far away. It's still not emotion. No matter what, none of it is emotion.  
  
He still doesn't love me and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.  
  
So that, I guess, is the next chapter.   
  
//It's true   
The way I feel   
Was promised by your face   
The sound of your voice   
Painted on my memories   
Even if you're not with me   
I'm with you//  
  
The whole boyfriend thing wasn't his idea. It was mine. I wanted it, of course I wanted it, so I tried to make it seem like a good idea. It was about a month after I last wrote that I decided it was fitting. We were already sleeping together, and we already spent all the time we could together, so the title "boyfriend" was the next, natural step. Maybe, I reasoned, the title would make it more real to him. I was still attempting to bring out a soul in him, little by little. I decided to try it.  
  
We were in his room, lying on his bed, him reading some old dead philosopher – don't ask why, I don't know – and me doing homework for my Psyc. 101 class. So he was there with Aristotle or Plato or someone and I said, "Have you ever considered dating me? Real boyfriend dating?"  
  
He lowered his book until it touched my rear – I was lying over his legs in a position that would be difficult to explain so I won't try – and he asked me, "Why?"  
  
Why should we have an actual, validated relationship? "'Cause we basically do everything that boyfriends do, anyway, so we might as well," I said. "We see each other all the time, you know, and we go on dates, and we fuck, and we're monogamous. Right?"  
  
"Yeah," was his answer.  
  
"So would you be my boyfriend, Trunks?"  
  
Trunks raised his eyebrows and asked, "Why? You said yourself that we're already a couple."  
  
"Yeah," I said, "yeah, but why not? Come on, Trunks."  
  
Then he said, "If you want to, sure. I'll be your boyfriend, and you'll be mine. Whatever makes you happy, little Chibi-chan, I'll try and give it to you." I remember those words exactly. Most of the time I fake the conversations I put here, I try to record them the best I can without remembering every word, but some of the things Trunks says I remember perfectly and that's one. Then he screwed me, casually, just a quickie. Before he went back to his philosophy he paused, Plato shut and fallen to the floor, and he warned me not to tell anyone about us. He smiled and his eyes were glass. Gotta love it, all this shit.  
  
So what is our relationship with the new title, exactly? Just about what it was before. The sex is about the same, just a little rougher but nothing that wouldn't have come with time. He's touchier in public, and I'm pretty sure just about everyone is starting to think there's something between us. But we only had a week together before he went off on his business trip, like I said. Damn the Capsule Corporation. Anyway, I don't know if this is the full extent out our relationship. Maybe there'll be more to come.  
  
We did have the most interesting conversation on the phone, though. Oh, yes.  
  
I complained and I got emotional and I told him I loved him, then he promised me we could tell everyone about us when he came home. He used the promise to comfort me. "On the very day?" I asked him, and he answered, "Yes." Off I went again with my words of love, predictably, and I cried a little.  
  
"Is your door closed?" he asked me, interrupting my sentence.  
  
It was, so told him so.  
  
"What are you wearing?" he asked me.  
  
He had called at three in the morning and I was in bed, wearing my boxers like I do just about every night, so that's how I answered.  
  
"Horny?" he asked.  
  
Of course I was. I hadn't seen him in four weeks.  
  
"Hard?" he asked.  
  
Yep. It was the first time I had heard his voice in four weeks, after all.  
  
"Lay down and put your hand on your stomach." As he spoke, telling me what to do, his voice purred, I swear to God it did. Then he said to me, "Do everything I tell you to, Goten, and make a little noise for me. Now move your hand lower, under your boxers. I want your fingertips to just touch those curls…" And, holy fucking mother of God, it was phone sex that was almost as good as the real thing. He's talented. So am I – why be humble if it's a fact? Yeah. It was good.  
  
That makes me wonder. I didn't ask for him to satisfy me, he just did. In the past he never would have done that. So maybe there has been more of a change than I give him credit for. He's active, he pleases me, and in some way or another it seems that he needs me. I could hear his excitement, I could hear him getting off to my moans, I could hear him come as I directed his fingers in and out of his ass. He started it, he was anxious to. Maybe – just maybe – maybe he needs me too.  
  
All I want is a few simple answers. Has he changed? Is he changing? What have I done? Is my decision right? But there is no such thing as a simple answer. There is no answer. I've already learned that.  
  
//It's true   
The way I feel   
Was promised by your face   
The sound of your voice   
Painted on my memories   
Even if you're not with me   
I'm with you//  
  
I wonder if all the crap I've believed for so long is really true.  
  
Is there really such a thing as soullessness? Gohan, my ever-so-much-smarter-than-me brother, doesn't think so. He doesn't think it's possible. I suppose he could be right. Trunks does show something around me, to me, about me. Emotions or not, there's something there. He's begun to act like he needs me. He spends hours with me, sometimes watching a movie or reading and sometimes just sitting in silence. He does things for me and to me. He's dating me – he's dating /me/. Is that his soul? Is that his personality? Fuck me – is that Trunks?  
  
I used to be so sure. I used to understand. Trunks had no soul. Trunks was empty. But then, hypocrite that I am, I went back on my choices and beliefs and now I don't know anymore. I don't know what to think.  
  
All I know is that I miss him.  
  
My dreams began again after Trunks left for England. When we were together – from the time I wrote last to four weeks ago – the dreams weren't there. I don't know why. Maybe I was too happy to have nightmares. Maybe the constant sex left me too tired to dream. For whatever reason, I slept just fine.  
  
He had been gone for two nights when I dreamt the first dream, and after that the dreams came again and again, often more than one a night. I began to remember them more and more often. Usually they were the broken fragments of classic separation anxiety dreams, unpleasant and depressing but not too bad. I would see him and reach out to him, not be able to, then chase after his retreating form rabbit-and-carrot style. Some of the dreams were sex – pure, gratuitous sex, and they were gorgeous. Then there were the others, surreal dreams, dreams of abuse, love, silence. Those were so strange, often impossible to recreate in my mind, and they scared me the most. Eventually, about a week in, I reverted to the old habit of sleep-depravation. That technique, of course, requires my being awake. That was torture. No Trunks to distract me, complete boredom with nothing to do, and, of course, a dream threatening to come when I slept. For two weeks I did that. It was horrible. I was bored out of my mind and as lonely then as I am now.  
  
I miss him.  
  
//You  
Now I see  
Keeping everything inside  
With you  
You  
Now I see  
Even when I close my eyes//  
  
In all honesty, I'm not frightened of him anymore. That's not to say I'm never scared, because that's not true, it's just that soullessness no longer scares me. Maybe there's no such thing, because if that's the case then of course there's nothing to be afraid of. Maybe Gohan was right in what he said. Maybe it's not possible.  
  
After all, Trunks has changed, a little, right? Soullessness never changes.  
  
I know I'm justifying. I know I'm trying to excuse what I already believe and the actions I will take because of it. I know it.  
  
The simple truth is this: I need Trunks. It's not that I want him, really bad, no, it's that I need him. These last few weeks are proof. God, how I miss him. I'm going crazy without him, I'm even worse than I was in West Green. I dream about him, I pretend to be with him, I wonder about him, I can never stop thinking of him. I need to be with Trunks. I will be with him.  
  
With you, Trunks, love, dearest, mine. With you.  
  
If I flew out there, I would get there in no time. Skip a day of class, fly to America, track his ki until I find him. What's the harm? No one would ever need to know, no one but the two of us.  
  
But he's coming home soon. No one knows when – it could be two more weeks, he could arrive home today. I can't wait to see him again. I won't go to him, though, and I'm not sure why. I'll wait for him to come back. I've managed this much, I can handle another two weeks. I'll wait.  
  
//With you  
You  
Now I see  
Keeping everything inside  
With you  
You  
Now I see  
Even when I close my eyes//  
  
There's a little bit more of the story, so I'll tell it.  
  
Some time passed, you see, from the time I began dreaming to now, and a few things changed. I noticed the change when this girl from my Psychology class, one who's been out with my group before, asked me about Trunks. She asked if he was seeing anyone. I answered her yes.   
  
"Some lucky girl," she said. Then she asked, "Who is it?"  
  
I'll be honest – I was brutal. I laughed, and she looked at me, confused. "You don't know who?" I asked. I told her that, yeah, he was seeing someone. I corrected the gender and watched her pretty blue eyes widen. Then, without telling her who, of course, I said that it was very serious indeed. The news, I think, frightened her. Strange that it would, in today's society. Sure, homosexuality used to be a rarity, but nowadays there are so many bisexuals it's a trend and gays are commonplace. I guess some people are stuck in the past. Maybe she thought that a guy like Trunks wouldn't be interested in men.  
  
What's important is the realization that came to me while she was walking away, dumbfounded. I recognized that I'm keeping Trunks to myself. Dating him, having the title boyfriend, has made me entitled to him. Now, I can fight them off the people that lust after him. When he lets me tell everyone about us, I'll be even stronger.  
  
I know I belong to Trunks, I've always known that. But Trunks belongs to me as well. Don't you see that, non-existent reader, don't you see?   
  
//You  
Now I see  
Keeping everything inside  
With you  
You  
Now I see  
Even when I close my eyes//  
  
I'm always happy when he's here. Even when we're fighting, even then. There's this strange sense of completion. He completes me, as corny as that is. Completes me mentally and emotionally, the same way his cock fills me when he fucks me. I'm not satisfied, though, I'm not happy with what our relationship is. I want it to continue growing. I want more change. I don't expect the happiness that people on Earth want or have. I don't think we can ever have it. Our relationship is too unnatural and too strange for Earth. Maybe not for Vegeta-sei but it is for here. We'll never be happy, not like that, but we could be more.  
  
So, I'll amend my resolution. Call me weak, call me a hypocrite, but I think I've finally got it. I'm not promising to be inactive, to do nothing, because I can't control myself that well. I'm promising to live for the present, to refuse to plan the future, and to forget the past. Change or no change, soul or no soul, I love Trunks. With my selfish kind of love comes possession. I will be with Trunks because I need to be. It's fitting that I possess him, too. Whatever he has – spirit, soul – is in my hands. No matter how brutal, no matter how inhuman, no matter how much it hurts, he is mine. I've got ownership.  
  
Amazing what a bit of free writing can teach you, isn't it?  
  
So, I'll forget the past and move on. With Trunks beside me, no matter what goes on around us, we'll be together and things'll be ok. In truth, that's all I want. And that, there, is the end of the story. That's all I sat down to say and it's all that ther  
  
he called he's on a plane home now so this is where I end   
  
//You  
Now I see  
Keeping everything inside  
With you  
You  
Now I see  
Even when I close my eyes//  
  
"God damnit! How long does it take to stop a fucking plane!"  
  
"What was that, Goten?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"This is abrupt. He must not have had much warning. It'll be nice to have him home. Don't you think?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Crowd noise.  
  
"Goten, stop. You're going to wear a hole in the carpet. Give them a moment."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Crowd noise.  
  
"Mom? How long will Trunks be home for?"  
  
"I'm not sure. Until he's called away again, I guess. I don't know when that will be."  
  
"Look – people are coming off the plane."  
  
"Shit, Trunks, just hurry up."  
  
Crowd noise.   
  
"Trunks!"  
  
The sound of running.  
  
"Trunks. I've missed you, God I've missed you."  
  
"Goten. I've missed you too, but I'm back now."  
  
"I love you. You know that, right?"  
  
"Yes. So where's my hello kiss, sweetheart?"  
  
"Don't call me that. You know that's not what I am to you."  
  
"Shut up and kiss me, Goten."  
  
"No. You're the dominant one, aren't you? You kiss me, Trunks."  
  
"Whatever you say."  
  
"Really, I've never seen Goten so anxious."   
  
"Indeed."  
  
"Hey ... hey! Look at Trunks and Goten!"  
  
"Shit."  
  
"Good god."  
  
"Mom? Are they…?"  
  
"I love you, Trunks. I love you." 


	4. Control

Control  
The Fourth Song of /Anthology/  
A TrunksxGoten Songfic Set to /Control/, by Puddle of Mudd  
  
- - -  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonball Z. I hope this is rather obvious. I do not own /Control/ or Puddle of Mudd. I hope this is likewise obvious. I am using both without permission. I am making no profit of any form.  
Warnings and notes: This piece is a songfic. The lyrics are /Control/, by Puddle of Mudd (from their CD /Come Clean/). It is the forth in the /Anthology/ series and the previous parts should be read first. It contains angst, yaoi, explicit language, the naming of sexual actions, and generally dark subjects. You have been warned. I appreciate reviews (swiftskyes@hotmail.com), be they critiques or a general good/bad word. Enjoy.  
Begun 10.16.01  
Completed 1.9.02  
  
- - -  
  
This is the last time I'm going to write. This is the end of the story, fourth and final. Same laptop, same document. I even put music on, a CD that Trunks gave me. The only different thing is the setting because this time the room I'm in isn't just mine.  
  
I've reached the end of this old story and am beginning a new one. The new story, the new book, that one I won't write down. I don't even need to be writing now – it's not like I have anything urgent to say. It's just that knowing this document was sitting there, unfinished, well, it was driving me mad. So I'm writing to complete it – both for my benefit and for yours, non-existent reader.  
  
So here's the end of the story.  
  
//I love the way you look at me   
I feel the pain you place inside   
You lock me up inside your dirty cage   
Well I'm alone inside my mind   
I'd like to teach you all the rules   
I get to see them set in stone   
I like it when you chain me to the bed   
Well then your secrets never show//  
  
Our relationship has finally reached completion. The hell I went through, all of it, that was the birth, the growth, the formation. Now it's complete.  
  
Basics first. We need each other. We are violent. We control each other. We play games. And, God, is there love.  
  
The need. We're tied to each other and I honestly don't think we would be able to survive on our own. When he goes on long business trips, now, I go with him. Days away is ok, and the sex is wonderful when we're together again, but much more than that and I start to go crazy. I don't know how he handles it, but judging from how he acts when he comes home he appears to miss me too.  
  
The violence. It was born during our second time together and has now become firmly rooted brutality. It's not an everyday thing. We go days, weeks even – well, we did once – without so much as hitting each other. We are violent, though. Just about every sparring session ends up with us screwing the living daylights out of each other. Each time we have sex there is an element of violence. It's just part of our relationship. I guess you could say it comes naturally to us.  
  
The control? That's an interesting story. He's always controlled me, always and always. Now I have power over him too. I can make him beg. I can tease him until he breaks. I can hurt him. I can make him bend and change and become what I want him to be. After all, I was the one that brought out his soul, wasn't I?  
  
A game – that's exactly what it is. We play this game, battle to control. Wherever we are and no matter who's around us, we play it. What it is, exactly, depends on our circumstances. I'll talk about it in detail soon, but not yet – this is just the basics.  
  
So then, love. As always, of course, I still love him. I can now write with complete and utter certainty that he feels the same about me. Trunks loves me. I know he does. I know it. Don't you see – I did it. My whole life all I've really wanted was Trunks' love and now I have it. There's no magical soul-mate connection, we still act as separate beings, but we love each other.  
  
So, in the end, it's not perfect. Trunks is still locked away from the world. We fight. We're violent. We're generally unaccepted. It works, though. For us it works. We have each other, the love it there, and for our entire lives we're promised to each other. It's not perfect but we don't really care. Trunks and I, we've made it. We're complete now.  
  
//I need to feel you   
You need to feel me   
I can't control you   
You're not the one for me no//  
  
I said before that it's more that just want – it's need. I was right. I need to be with Trunks. When I'm with him, even when I'm not controlling him, when I can just feel him there, there's this sense of completion. When I'm apart from him too long, just a few days, everyday things start to seem hollow and unimportant and all I can think about is the next time I'll be with Trunks again. Call me an addict, call me whatever you want, all I know is that I don't ever want to be apart from him. If I'm going to function at all, then I can't be away from him.  
  
Now, Trunks needs me too. He's almost always there and when he leaves he always comes back, and that's proof enough. Then there are the things he does for me and the things he says to me, all things that wouldn't happen if he didn't need me by his side. He pulled me out of the community college and is paying for me to attend the same college he's at – he's graduated from high school –so that we can share a dorm room. He buys me things, gifts and so forth. He takes me on dates. Best of all, and the most important thing too, is that he's stayed with me for my entire life. No one would ever stay with me for over 18 years unless he needed to, and no one would promise his forever to me unless he needed to. Trunks needs me.  
  
Part of the need we feel is a need to dominate.  
  
I am, by nature, uncontrollable. I almost never give up, I rarely submit, I find it difficult to back down. Trunks is the same way. I think our bloodlines, human mothers and saiya-jin fathers, are what makes this come so naturally. We can't be controlled and we long to control, so we fight. Sparring or dominating, even intentionally causing pain, all of it control. It satisfies our need.  
  
Non-existent reader, I know you think we're both crazy. That's a reasonable conclusion and I'd be lying it I said it wasn't true. You think that people as violent and sado-masochist as we are should never be together, simply for safety's sake. Well, you're right. However, Trunks or I don't give rat's ass what you think. Too bad for you, huh? So it's not perfect, not by your standards. Suffer. So you think it's wrong. Your problem, not mine. So you doubt my sanity. Good for you. So you think we don't belong together. You're not the only one. I'm happy, he's happy, and if society damns us, well, we're going to hell anyway. We'll never stop what we're doing now, no matter what anyone does or says. Simple.  
  
We're happy.  
  
//I can't control you  
You can't control me  
I need to feel you   
So why's it evil//  
  
I've never had complete control over Trunks. He can't be controlled. On the same note, however, Trunks can never completely control me. When someone wins our game, the victory is sweet but short lived because the next time we play the slate is wiped clean and anyone can win. Trunks is the dominant in our relationship, so he's often the top and he has "control," at least in the way most people would define it. The uke, though, the submissive, he does have power. That combined with my natural refusal to be controlled by anyone gives me the power to control him too, even while he fucks me. It's hard to explain. I'll try to, when I get there. I'm sure you're anxious to hear about it. Point is, I have just as much control as he does.  
  
You have to remember that we don't do this just because we want to. We also do it because we need to. I'm 18 now, he's 19, and we're at the height of our saiya-jin sex drives. If we didn't fuck the way we do, so often, so hard, our hormones would just go berserk. Regular, normal, human sex just wouldn't be satisfying enough and, trust me, an unsatisfied teenage saiya-jin is a frightening thing. If you had seen us on the night of the day I wrote last time, when Trunks and I found somewhere secluded, then you would know what I'm talking about. The saiya-jin lust is really something. Now that I've found Trunks, I seemed to get even more horny every day. I used to wonder how Vegeta and Dad could stand it, trapped as they are by human females. I know now, but that's part of the story that I'll get to later.  
  
Anyway, getting back to my point, no matter how strange you think we are just remember that we need it.  
  
Sure, it's probably immoral, wrong, whatever. It breaks every rule that any good, healthy society would ever create. I'm talking about real violence here. More than some roughness and a tear to my ass. This is more than just one cracked rib. This is a few cracked ribs, a fractured bone or two, dislocations, huge abrasions, bruises that doesn't fade for a week, cuts that stream with blood. Actual, real violence. When a human would tie his partner down, we knock each other to the floor. When a normal human like you would slap your partner, we hit each other. /That/ is violence.  
  
Aren't you were glad you were born completely human, my dear non-existent reader?  
  
//I love the way you break my skin   
I feel the hate you place inside  
I need to get your voice out of my head  
'Cause I'm the guy you'll never find  
I think you know all of the rules  
There's no expressions on your face  
I hope that someday you will let me go  
Release me from my dirty cage//  
  
So. The game we play. I guess I'll just get that part over with. I'm not entirely sure where I plan to go with this final part chapter, but I know that no matter what I say our game will be an essential part.  
  
It is violent. Understand that fact and accept it. It's important and it's the basis of everything we are. We are violent. We do hurt each other. We take pleasure in it, too. We love it.  
  
Violence may not seem like something that you should inflict upon a loved one. But we're both half-breeds, both half saiya-jin, and for us it comes naturally. All of these opposites are really very, very similar. Pleasure and pain, love and hate. The pain is pleasure. Within all the hate that we show each other, there is love. To be honest, sometimes I really feel like I hate him. He infuriates me, he drives me mad. Through all of it, though, I love him more than anything else in the universe exactly like I always have. The same way he comes to the violence I inflict I love him through that hate I feel, and the same is true from him to me.   
  
It's very difficult to explain.  
  
Anyway, our game. I guess I'll simplify it to a single sentence and start from there. The goal, the biggest goal, is to make the other person come while inflicting as much pain as possible. It sounds simple, but it's not. For example, we can't hurt each other so bad that we're out of action for too long even although, God knows, we're capable of it. We usually start out pretty calm, nothing more than light restraint, moderate pain, more mental abuse – teasing, taunting, badgering, that soft of thing. The big stuff, that good stuff, it usually comes later. One of us will be holding the other down and then he'll do his thing. Trunks is quite direct in his violence – he'll grab my hair and pull my head back or twist my arm until the joint disconnects while he fucks me so hard it feels like he's trying to rip my ass to shreds, or he'll choke me as he blows me so that I see twice as many stars. I'm a bit more subtle – I'll make him contort his body into unnatural positions or restrain him, then I'll dig my fingers into his most sensitive flesh and I'll fuck him or ride him or blow him or rim him, whichever I want. Sometimes it's more brutal – bites that break the skin, slaps that cause bruising, muscle tears, one of us will get thrown against the floor and some bone or another will crack.  
  
Pain combined with pleasure, that's the rule. Remember, though, rules are created to be broken. Sometimes the pleasure for the submissive gets forgotten and it becomes rape. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. All I can say is that it's a necessary evil. You get used to it.  
  
The game also has a less physical, out of the bedroom side. We fight. We piss each other off. He implies these cruel messages – he hates me, he can't stand being with me, I sicken him, so forth. If we can get beneath the other's skin, really irritate him, well, that sure as hell is power if there ever was any. It's also a test. If I really love him then I'll know it's not true and I'll stay with him no matter what we says. I do. I'll never leave.  
  
For all that he says, I do know that he loves me because he tells me he does. He doesn't say it very often. We aren't soft and emotional like that. Even when we aren't actively playing our game we're not whispering sweet, pointless words of love. Sure, I tell him I love him all of the time. On the rare occasions he says it to me it's even more important than it would be if I heard it every day. When he does express that emotion I treasure his words.  
  
Well that's our game, raw and ungilded. Violence is the key, violence and control, amidst the love we have for each other. We're a couple of sick bastards who get off on pain. What excuses can I make? Actually, there is one. We're saiya-jin half-breeds.  
  
If I was reading this story right now, I would want to know how things ended up this way. So I guess I'll tell that next – everything that's happened since I wrote last.  
  
//I need to feel you   
You need to feel me   
I can't control you   
You're not the one for me no//  
  
Where did I leave off? Yeah – Trunks called from the plane, already on his way home, I finished up my writing in a hurry and rushed out to the airport with his family – not Vegeta, though, because Bulma couldn't make him – and my mother because she was at Bulma's place at the time. When he stepped into the airport, carrying his laptop case and looking, well, like himself, I rushed over. We talked for a second or two and next thing I knew we were making out, there, in the airport, with half the world watching. Then we went to his house, sat through hellos and a meal, and finally we escaped to his room and fucked each other. He was happy to see me too, by the way.  
  
News got out, of course. Started slowly, I bet, because I'm sure no one in Trunks' family or mine was anxious for people to know. It was a full airport, though, and Bulma's never been able to keep her mouth shut for very long. In the end we didn't need to tell anyone about our relationship because most everyone knew. I did take the pleasure of telling a few people – I couldn't pass up the opportunity to claim Trunks as mine. A lot of people nodded like they already knew and they did. It wasn't too big of a surprise.  
  
I felt like things were going pretty well. Trunks was back and he was actually changing. Really, actually changing, and God was I happy. Granted, it wasn't much. Above all, he was becoming more possessive of me every day. That was when the control game started. We were in the middle of another session of wild monkey saiya-jin sex, and, well, one thing led to another and somehow we ended up rolling across my living room floor, pinning each other and taking advantage of the situation when we could. It was a pale shadow of what we have now but it was the beginning. From that day on it grew, inconsistently, a little some days and a shitload the next, until it reached what we have now. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.  
  
What seems strange, in retrospect at least, was that I didn't completely approve of us at the beginning. It was to be expected that others would disapprove, but after wanting him for so long I'm amazed that I did too. My mother caused my doubt. She's a human and so I was born and raised here on Earth, and that made me think that our game, even at its first stages, was sick. Sick, disgusting, wrong. Humans aren't violent like that, humans aren't control freaks like that, and I was raised to be a human.  
  
For a moment I really doubted our relationship and whether I should've been with Trunks at all.  
  
Remember, though, how I had planned not to think things through? Well, I followed that. I refused to think about it, I refused to think about the past and I refused to worry about the future. The moment was what I concentrated on, and like I had promised to do I lived for it.  
  
I let myself love.  
  
Not everyone looked at it the way I did, though. We found out real quick that people don't approve of us. I couldn't make them see it my way – that's one kind of control I didn't have.  
  
//I can't control you  
You can't control me  
I need to feel you  
So why's it evil//  
  
The first one to confront me, the first one to have the guts to actually say something to my face rather than behind my back was my brother. He knew about Trunks and me because by then everyone knew about Trunks and me. People all over the world were hearing rumors about the future president of that Japanese company Capsule Corporation and his boyfriend.  
  
So we were having dinner at my parent's house, the whole family – my grandpa, Mom, Dad, Gohan and Videl and Pan, and me. At one point, while the females were in the kitchen, talking instead of doing the dishes, and Dad and Grandpa were in the living room, Gohan pulled me aside.  
  
"It's Trunks, isn't it?" he asked me, and I nodded. "It was him from the very beginning?" he asked. It was obvious, but I nodded again anyway.  
  
Videl had been the one to tell him, many days before, and then Pan had brought home some interesting rumors that compounded the situation. He stumbled over the words – argumentative, angry, public, violent. He was concerned for me, the classic worried big brother. He was cautious and careful and trying not to jump to conclusions but doing so spectacularly. God, it pissed me off.  
  
I told him his daughter's contacts had been right – we were violent. Quite violent, actually, is what I told him, even going so far as to brag about our dirty little relationship. "You should see us inside of the bedroom," I said. "The shock'd kill you."  
  
Gohan looked stunned and I can't really blame him. I'm normally not that brutal in my honesty and I'm normally that vulgar around my family members. He stared at me, standing there in the hallway of our parents' house, then he told me, "It sounds like an unhealthy relationship."  
  
Yeah. I most certainly didn't appreciate that comment. I told him, "Look, Gohan, I know I can't convince you that it's not a bad thing. I'm sure you've made up you mind and nothing I say will change it. But, you see, I love Trunks – I really do – and nothing you say will be able to change me either. So just piss off, Gohan, because there's nothing you can do to stop me. You helped me once, and I'm thankful, but I don't want your advice any more. Just leave us alone." I smiled, and turned, and left the hallway.  
  
That was when I knew for sure that I wasn't going anywhere. What I mean to say is that I recognized I would stay with Trunks for as long as and longer than he would have me. The little doubts I had, my fears, they were no longer important. I needed Trunks. I've always know that I loved him, unconditionally, and after that conversation I knew that regardless of right or wrong I would stay with him, too.  
  
That wasn't the last of the disapproval we encountered. Gohan continued to look down on us and he still does. Some people condemned us simply because we're both guys. Kids we knew, even the ones that didn't mind gays, they would shy away from our loud angry antics.  
  
Not everyone looked down on us. There were some, most of them around our age, that were and are fascinated by us. Maybe they like gays. Maybe they like the look of us two more-attractive-than-most guys together. Maybe, though, they sense our game, our battle, and are drawn to it the same way I was. If that's true, well, those ones would make good saiya-jin.  
  
Anyway, there're some that accept us but they're the exceptions to the rule. The general rule is that people don't approve. On the whole, most people think for a variety of reasons that what we are is wrong – evil, immoral, sinful, so on, so forth. Screw them, I say, and let Trunks continue to screw me.  
  
//You and me//  
  
By this point, about three weeks had passed since Trunks' return. Outside of the bedroom, out there with the rest of the world, our relationship had become what it would be in the end. We fought in public constantly and we were physical – not cuddly physical but /together/ physical, hand on the ass, teeth on the ear, arm around the waist. Like those touchy couples I'm sure you hate but with a rawness that would make you cringe. Inside the bedroom the formation of our game was progressing even faster than it had been before. Every now and then when we were both at our horniest, we would reach the level we have now.  
  
Last time I wrote, while Trunks was still in America, I said we could never have human happiness. I know I didn't really write much about it, I just said that our relationship was too strange for Earth and so the happiness earthlings have would never be ours. As I wrote that, I was thinking about a kind of happiness that was unique to Trunks and me, a happiness that other people wouldn't consider happiness, one that was too extreme – too cold then too impassioned – one too brutal, one too inhuman for humans to accept. By then, three weeks after Trunks' return, I could feel that kind of happiness being born. I can't describe how I felt, sensing the start of it, or how I feel now that it's here. I can't say what it felt like then because I don't know how to describe it. All I can say is that it felt good.  
  
At the same time that happiness was coming, Trunks was becoming himself. His soul was emerging from where he had hidden it, deep within himself. No, he's not soulless. I don't know why – maybe there really is no such thing – he's just not. He has a soul and he has feelings and he has emotions. He doesn't express himself the way everyone else does, that's all. He lives very coldly, calculating everything, judging and weighing before he acts. The emotions he has show themselves rarely and they don't come across the way that most people's emotions do. When they show they're deeper, truer, they have more meaning, and that makes them frightening. Anyway, he has a soul. He has a personality, a cold and careful personality. What he was before, everything that scared me, that's faded, that's been diluted by my hard work, that's been given life, but it's still there. It is his soul.   
  
At the same time I was becoming myself. I stopped being Trunks' slave. I still do things for him, he still has control over me, but I have an attitude now. I don't always submit. I'm more of a consort, now, than a slave. I'm a consort with a hell of an attitude. I think he likes it more that he ever liked my obedience. He has to work to control me – it's a challenge and we both love a challenge.  
  
Us then was the growth to us now. Everything that went on between us, all those changes, it was all the lead up to what we are now. Happiness, what I've always wanted, was coming – just not in the way I had expected.  
  
//I love the way you look at me  
I love the way you smack my ass   
I love the dirty things you do   
I have control of you//  
  
Anyway, back to the story. I had come to terms with the violence, the brutality, in our relationship. When I reminded myself of my promise not to think, the violence became very easy to live with. /Very/ easy, as in it didn't bother me at all. I lived with it, I enjoyed it, and I loved it too, all without any worry. After being so adverse to it doesn't that seem strange? I noted that strangeness and let it sit there in the back of my head. It didn't bother me either.  
  
Then, about five weeks ago, this theory developed, growing on its own, that explained why it was so easy for me to accept what we were. You see, we're half-breeds, as I keep saying. I figured our relationship was the kid that any saiya-jin would have – one that was brutal, that was violent, one in which the partners fought just like we did.  
  
It explained everything, really. Humans didn't understand or accept us because what we had wasn't human – it was natural to us but not to them. Gohan disapproved because, for most intents and purposes, he's a human. We had the relationship we did because the violence, battle, domination, it's all part of how saiya-jin live. It explained it all. We did it because it was natural. It was in our blood.  
  
For once I can say with honesty that I wasn't an idiot and I can say with certainty that I wasn't wrong.  
  
I brought the idea to Trunks. He didn't really care, I don't think. Trunks is like that. He doesn't question why he's more removed, colder, more calculating than anyone on this planet. He doesn't question the control he has over me and the rest of humanity. In the same way, he doesn't question our relationship. He just accepts it and lives it. But for my sake he pretended to care and pretended to consider it, then he agreed that it sounded possible.  
  
That's not the reason I know I'm right. I mean, he was only getting me to shut up. I know because of something I saw when we were at his house and decided to spar. We wanted to use the gravity room, but when we got there the red light by the door was on. The room was in use. We thought we were alone – we had fucked rather loudly in the kitchen only an hour before so I sure as hell hoped there was no one else around. We went around to the side, looked in a window, and that's how I found out that my theory was right.  
  
//I love the way you look at me  
I love the way you smack my ass   
I love the dirty things you do   
I have control of you//  
  
The windows are small. The place can get up to a real high gravity and glass breaks easily. Well, anyway, we were both peering in the same too small window and then they came into view. Them – Vegeta and my father. Both of Dad's shirts were gone and his gi pants were ripped across the knee, Vegeta was wearing black spandex and a sleeveless shirt, and for a moment I thought they were sparring. My dad was moving quickly, in jumps, appearing randomly. Vegeta was walking, slowly, his arms crossed. His eyes watched Dad, tracking like a predator. Then he used that same move, super-speed, and appeared up in the air were we could just see his feet.  
  
"They're using the gravity room," Trunks said. I nodded, still watching, and in the seconds while Trunks spoke my father's feet came into view just in front of Vegeta's. Vegeta must have predicted what Dad would do. Well, Vegeta caught Dad – I could tell because what I could see of Dad went stiff in shock and then he tried to kick back – and then they went down, hitting the floor hard, Dad first. Still nothing more than a sparring session. I could tell Trunks didn't want to stand there, watching, so I was about to turn and go. But Vegeta got up on his knees and my father pushed up from the floor, pausing on all fours. They were facing each other, but Dad's head was down. Vegeta said something – I couldn't hear what, of course, though the sound-proofed walls – then grabbed a handful of Dad's hair and then things were too interesting to look away. I whispered Trunks' name and he turned back to the window just as Vegeta pushed his pants down with his free hand and pulled Dad's head over to sit right in front of his impressive hard-on.  
  
We stood there, staring in from the tiny window, as my dad gave Vegeta a blowjob. Then we watched Dad wrestle Vegeta for power. Then we watched my father screw Vegeta's firm tight little ass as Vegeta braced himself against the support beam in the middle of the room. We couldn't see it all because they kept going out of view but we didn't leave until they were lying on the floor, done. It didn't seem to bother either of us that we were watching our fathers go at it. Goku's my dad, yeah, but at the time it wasn't important.  
  
I know my theory's right because of what I saw them doing. They were not very nice to each other. They restrained each other. They forced each other. They were violent, rolling around on the floor, not caring when the other's head was banged, not careful or gentle. It was a lot like Trunks and me only their movements were less frantic teenage sex and more purposeful and more intentional. They were just like us only older, more mature, more experienced.  
  
Vegeta and Goku, my father, are the only pureblooded saiya-jin left in the universe and they showed us exactly what I had predicted saiya-jin were like. It was the perfect support to my theory. So I was right, for once. You know, it's a nice change to not be an idiot. Trunks and I, we are what we are because of our blood. It's right for us, it's natural, and it's the reason why it feels so perfect.   
  
We hid out in his room until we knew they were gone. A few days later, we used the gravity room for our own little training session.  
  
//I love the way you look at me  
I love the way you smack my ass   
I love the dirty things you do   
I have control of you//  
  
Violence is more than just violence to us.  
  
When his touch on my skin sends signals of pain through my nerves and to my brain, it does this major mind-job on me. Everything looks different, it all feels different. There's more to it. More emotion, more sensation, more of everything, a thousand times more.  
  
Call it what you will – an upper, an aphrodisiac, a turn on – whatever you call it, to us it is. We spar and both of us come out with a hard-on. It makes my heart pound, it makes the blood rush though my veins until I can hear it. All of my senses become over-active, all the sounds and smells and colors and feelings grow. The sex, that it does wonders to. It makes me want it until I can't stand the wait anymore and then it makes me enjoy it more than seems possible.  
  
We love the violence, we love the feeling of control, we even love how it feels to be dominated. When he's under my power it's a rush, an ego-trip, and I want to use him until either his body or his spirit breaks. But to be under his control, well, that's freedom. That sounds impossible, but hear me out. He makes me surrender, he makes me give in, he tears away my boundaries and my inhibitions and tortures me with pleasure. I'm free to live it all when he controls me. I don't have a choice and because of that I'm free.  
  
We love it.  
  
I would shrug, but you, non-existent reader, wouldn't be able to see. There's no excuse. It's just what I am – a creature of the flesh, a sinner, a saiya-jin.  
  
//I love the way you look at me  
I love the way you smack my ass   
I love the dirty things you do   
I have control of you//  
  
So, interested in hearing what our sex is really like? Regardless of what you would answer if you were real I would share anyway so here it is.  
  
Last night, in our too-small dorm room, we woke the neighbors. We do that all of the time – I know because of the way they pound on the walls while we're at it and the looks we get the next morning. This time, though, it was different.  
  
I was hard at work, using this same laptop, doing homework, when Trunks came home. I called my hello and I kept on working while he dumped his stuff. Then he came up behind me – I was sitting on our single chair, hunched over the computer – wrapped his arms around my waist and whispered into my ear, "I'm gonna fuck you 'til you scream." So I closed the document, shut down the laptop, and put it on the ground.  
  
He pulled me off the chair and I lay on the floor, looking up at him.  
  
Trunks stripped my shirt off first, then pulled my pants down to my ankles. He forced my legs up until my knees touched my ears. No prep, no lube – he took me raw. Try to get a human to do that. A few moments and I was hard, a few minutes and I came, my hands sliding over the carpet and my nails digging into the weave with nothing to hold on to. He didn't stop. He kept going, kept going, making me come again and again. He never lost his erection and he only came once. My legs began to hurt and God was my ass sore. I doubt the bloodstains will come out of the carpet. He pulled out, gave me a few seconds rest, then flipped me onto my stomach and took me again, and again, until I swear I started to run out of semen.  
  
My calls started as pants then became moans, then begging, then cries, and eventually I did scream. I screamed for him to stop. After one last ride, he did.  
  
I slept like I rock last night and I can't quite sit or walk today.  
  
I'm sure that it looked and sounded like some kind of rape, but it wasn't. That's not to say that it never is, but it's rare and it's just as likely to be me on him as it is him on me so in the end it's ok. It wasn't rape that time, though. I mean, I came so many times it hurt. I came until I screamed for him to stop. It was pleasure to the breaking point and that's not rape. It was violent, it was extreme, and my screaming woke the neighbors at some ungodly hour of the night, but it wasn't rape. He had control, all right. Complete and utter control. If he hadn't wanted to stop he wouldn't have. Trunks has stamina. He can go for ages without coming to orgasm and can keep a hard-on after it. He had an hour left in him, give or take. I only had minutes. /That/ is control.  
  
//I need to feel you   
You need to feel me   
I can't control you   
You're not the one for me no//  
  
Look, I understand what you must be thinking: I'm crazy, we're crazy. If we're gonna do what we do, which is disturbing enough on its own, couldn't we do it a little less publicly? You know what I mean – don't be so raucous, don't wake the neighbors, don't cling on to each other in public places, don't share it so frankly with friends and family members, so on and so forth. Can't we just have some tact?  
  
Two weeks ago Vegeta came to Trunks and said those same things.  
  
Vegeta was fairly tolerant of our antics – he gave us a while to prove ourselves before he spoke to Trunks. Trunks told me he started of by generally disapproving of everything we were. How stupid. You see, my Trunks is just as touchy about that subject as I am. You don't dis our relationship in front of either of us, plain and simple.  
  
I love the comeback that Trunks used. He said to his father, all frank and unornamented, "I saw Goku fucking you." Yeah. That blew the cocky Prince's cover to shreds. I mean, he's just as bad as us and we have proof because we've seen it. So, Trunks says, he changed his story real quick and went off about how noisy we are, how everyone knew about us, that the rumors were unpleasant. Then he ordered, that little fuck /ordered/ Trunks to quiet down and keep it under control.  
  
I'm not sure why Vegeta cared what others say about us – he's never had a clean reputation himself. Maybe he was trying to uphold his damn saiya-jin pride. Maybe he cares for his son a little more than he's willing to admit and thinks he knows what's best for Trunks. Maybe he just really likes the money that CC brings in for him to spend. In any case, he was trying to get us to conceal who we are.  
  
Get this, understand this: We have no shame, none at all, about who we are or what we do. There is no pleading, no guilt trips, no begging that will ever make us change our mind. Just give us a break, Goddamnit – we've saved the sorry butts of innocents plenty of times so if we want to fuck each other and let everyone in the world know, we will. Let us have our vice. Even if you don't want it to be true, well, it is and nothing, /nothing/ will ever change it. Not my brother's disapproval or Vegeta's pleading, not what you want us to do, not a thing in the world. If you think the relationship is sick you can shove that news up your ass.   
  
//I can't control you  
You can't control me  
I need to feel you  
So why's it evil//  
  
Well I had a story in here somewhere before I went off on all that so I should get back to it.  
  
For a while more after Vegeta came to Trunks people continued to confront us, continued to openly disapprove of us, continued to try to change us. Yeah, we changed – we got worse. During that time we reached the level we have now and the evolution was complete. Eventually people stopped coming.  
  
All this began during the summer and by this point a new school year was about to start. Trunks pulled a few strings and got me into his college of choice and into his dorm room. Before, we were basically living together – we were always in the same place, spending most nights together at his house or mine or in the woods. Now we're really living together in our small bedroom with the twin beds pushed together.  
  
So, that takes me to where I am now. I'm beginning my first real year of college, I'm living with my male lover, and I'm the center of just about every rumor in the school. Yeah.  
  
No, it's not perfect. Trunks is still cold, we do fight, we are violent, we're not accepted, it is not and will never be perfect. I still have these memories, too, memories of the past – of discovering what I thought was Trunks' soullessness, of running away terrified, of being lonely, of coming home only to have my hopes destroyed, of giving up, of failing, of loneliness that made me go insane, of uncertainty, of everything that got me to where I am now. On top of all that, my human blood still reacts to what I am every now and then, it tries to push me way from Trunks. So, yeah, it's not perfect, and yeah, sometimes I don't think I should be here.  
  
I refuse to give in. Aided by my love for Trunks, its not that difficult. See, I love Trunks, a love that hurts but also because it hurts. I need him too, I need to be with him. Because I love him I forget all the bad things and because I need him I'm blind to the faults in our relationship. I love him and I need him and that will keep me beside him, memories or no memories, forever.  
  
So where am I now? I'm in love with Trunks, living in a cramped little dorm room with him and raising hell. The past is still there and I can never forget it but I'm moving on.  
  
//You and me//  
  
This is how the story ends: I am happy. Not carefree, not at peace, not human happy at all, but happy. You, dear non-existent reader, probably don't understand how a rib that's still healing and an ass that hurts so bad I have to lay on my stomach to write could be happiness but I don't live my life so that you can understand. I'm happy, and that's the end of the final chapter of this story.  
  
I'm sure there's more that I can say. What's going to happen from here on in? Dad's 50 years old now, give or take a few because it's hard to keep track of the years he spent in the Room of Spirit and Time and, well, dead. He still looks like he's at the height of his life and he still acts like he is and I bet he could keep going for a while still. Vegeta said once that saiya-jin have an extended prime and by the looks of it it's true. Even if Trunks and I get half of that we've got a while left. We've got plenty of time together and with our relationship I'm sure there will be plenty to say.  
  
I'm not going to tell that story, though. This is the end. It's over with and there will be no sequel.  
  
I love him with everything that I am and I have forever to show it to him.  
  
However, I don't have forever to show it to you, non-existent reader, because Trunks has come home and is now standing behind me, reading over my shoulder. Hello, love. It's time for me to go – you know what we're like.  
  
//You're not the one for me no  
You're not the one for me no  
You're not the one for me no  
You're not the one for me no//  
  
"Hey."  
  
"Do you write about me often?"  
  
"No. Only a few times. That was the last part – I was just finishing the story."  
  
"Tell me: what is it that you write about, exactly?"  
  
"Hey, calm down. It's about us, our history, everything up to now."  
  
"Ah."  
  
"So, how was your class?"  
  
"Boring, no different than usual. That teacher is hot, though. Almost makes it worthwhile."  
  
"The American one, right? Adams? Yeah. A rear so tight it could kill a guy. I suppose you were going somewhere with that comment."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Look, Trunks, my ass hurts so bad I can barely stand. You can't fuck me again today."  
  
"Turn over to your back."  
  
"Why?"  
  
The sound of sudden movement. "Because I said so."  
  
"I swear to God, Trunks, if you dislocate my shoulder I'm gonna kill you."  
  
"Then turn over."  
  
"I don't have the energy for this."  
  
Rustling and the squeak of bedsprings.  
  
"Good. Now keep you arms there, Goten, and don't move."  
  
Shifting of clothing.  
  
"Let's see if you have the energy or not."  
  
Ticking of a clock.  
  
Breathing.  
  
Panting.  
  
"God, Trunks, I swear you've been practicing. Honestly, I didn't think I had it in me today."  
  
Ragged breathing.  
  
"Shit…"  
  
Moaning.  
  
"Fuck, Trunks, just a little bit more."  
  
Near silence.  
  
"Trunks! What the hell – what the hell are you trying to do to me?"  
  
Near silence.  
  
"Just a little – "  
  
Movement.  
  
"Shut up, Goten, and keep your damn arms above your head."  
  
"Please, don't stop."  
  
"Shut up, damnit, or I'll gag you! Do you want me to finish or not?"  
  
Silence.  
  
Stifled moans.  
  
"Tru – T –"  
  
Loud pants.  
  
"Holy shit!"  
  
Silence. The ticking of a clock.  
  
Movement and the groanings of a bed.  
  
"Amazing. Amazing. Trunks, you know, you do know I love you, right? You do know."  
  
"You come once and then you start this? Hn – weakling."  
  
"You do know, right? I live my life for you."  
  
"Yes, little chibi Goten-chan of mine, yes, I know. I love you too."  
  
"I honestly never thought we would get this far, you know. I didn't."  
  
Silence.  
  
Movement and a crash.  
  
"Now it's time for me to repay the favor." 


End file.
